Ye walked Italy in socks all summer. By Christmas, you could order a pair

Ye came out of a Milan doorway on 22 Sep 2023 into a wall of phones, covered head to foot in black. There’s a hood wrapped over his face, an oversized top, wide trousers and, at the bottom, what look like black socks. HotNewHipHop had him at Giuseppe Zanotti’s Milan Fashion Week show that day, and it called the footwear what everyone else did: sock shoes.

They weren’t for sale yet. They wouldn’t be until December, and until then the only look anyone got at Ye’s next shoe came from paparazzi, mostly in Italy.

Florence, Rome, Milan

He’d been in Italy most of the summer. The Independent dates the first photos of him and Bianca Censori in Florence to 1 Aug 2023, and within days they were out with no shoes at all, Highsnobiety reported. He even walked on barefoot as the surprise guest at Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus show in Rome that August. By September he was back in Florence in all black, a hooded scarf over most of his face.

Complex, citing the Daily Mail, reported that the face coverings might break a 1977 Italian public order law, though it wasn’t clear anyone was investigating.

It started in LA, in bright blue

It wasn’t an Italy thing. The sock shoes first turned up after Ye’s secret Yeezy Season 10 presentation in Los Angeles on 1 May 2023, Hypebeast reported. Mascotte Holdings, the company that holds his brands, filed a trademark for them that month. On 25 May he wore a bright blue pair for ice cream at Jeni’s in LA, with a Polizei tee. Highsnobiety’s read was simple: Ye doesn’t wear shoes anymore.

By September the colour had gone, and so had most of his face.

15 Dec 2023: the YZY Pods

The pre-order opened on the Yeezy webstore on 15 Dec 2023, and the socks had a name: YZY Pods. Black only, three sizes, a stretch knit to mid-shin on a thin rubber sole. Hypebeast’s headline called them Ye’s “infamous sock shoes”. He launched them on Instagram on 28 Dec, and Vibe didn’t miss the significance. It called them his first footwear since leaving adidas.

In February 2024 Ye said he’d sold more than 260,000 pairs in a single day, Complex reported. The summer in Italy had been the preview.