Ye’s mirror selfie was about his joggers. Everyone zoomed in on the boots.

Ye’s caption was about his trousers. On 14 Dec 2018 he posted a mirror selfie to Twitter and said his joggers “make another appearance”, and Hypebeast took them to be Brain Dead sweatpants. The zoom didn’t stop at the sweatpants. It went straight to the floor.

On his feet was a pair of black boots nobody had seen before. Hypebeast and Complex picked out the same details. It’s all black, with a glossy shroud over the laces, a circular pull tab on the tongue and a bulky, sculpted midsole. Complex called it “what could be a new Yeezy boot silhouette”.

It’s one of the odder entries in the record. There’s a clear photo of the shoe, on Ye, posted from his own account, and still no name, no colourway and no date.

Paparazzi, 700s and a Drake thread

It’d already been a long day. Complex reported he’d run from paparazzi that morning in a pair of Yeezy Boost 700s, then changed into the boots. The selfie went up in a break from a long run of tweets about Drake. Hypebeast said it had no details to go on.

A red-marker sketch he’d deleted

Both outlets reached for the same clue: a sketch of the 2019 Yeezy line that Ye had posted and then deleted. They’d both written it up the day it went up, 27 Jul 2018. It was drawn in red marker on the back of a printed page, under the heading “YEEZY 2019”. It showed six shoes: a 700 V3, a 451, a 500 V2, a 350 V3, a 1050 and a Terrex. He came back later to add a basketball shoe.

On that sheet the 1050 is the one drawn as a tall boot. Whether the December pair came from that drawing, neither Hypebeast nor Complex could say.

Ye had captioned the joggers. It’s the boots the record still can’t name.