Ye wore an unseen yellow 350 V2 to Maxfield. Fans named it the Lime.

Ye walked into Maxfield in West Hollywood on Black Friday 2017 and, TMZ said, walked out without buying a thing. Nobody cared about the shopping. They were looking at his shoes.

They were Yeezy Boost 350 V2s in a pale yellow close to highlighter, from the knit to the laces, and they weren’t on anyone’s release list. There was no stripe down the side and no SPLY-350 lettering. A grey zip hoodie, grey sweats and cream socks did the rest. TMZ ran BACKGRID’s photos the next day, close-up of the shoes included.

Ye wears plenty of pairs that never make it to retail, Complex pointed out that weekend. This one had a name within a day.

The ‘Lime’ sample

Complex reported that Yeezy accounts were calling it the “Lime” sample. Sneaker Freaker ran with the name, and said fans had matched it to a pair they’d spotted on the Yeezy Season 3 runway, early the year before. Hypebeast pointed out the shoe had first surfaced almost two years earlier.

The timing made people think it was close. The Semi Frozen Yellow had dropped a week before, on 18 Nov 2017, the Beluga 2.0 had just gone too, and the Blue Tint was lined up for 16 Dec. That’d make three 350 V2 colourways in a month, so a fourth didn’t seem far-fetched.

Seven months to the Butter

No 350 V2 called Lime ever released. adidas’s next pale yellow pair was the Butter, style F36980, on 30 Jun 2018. It’d replaced a “Peanut Butter” colourway that leaked first, according to Yeezy Mafia via Hypebeast. The Butter’s tonal all over, and its SPLY-350 text and stripe sit on the medial side, where they’re easy to miss.

So is it the shoe Ye wore in West Hollywood? None of the 2017 reports could say, and none of them called it Butter. That name didn’t exist yet.