Ye wore a yellow Season 8 boot to the office 19 months before it dropped

Navy fleece, washed-out jeans and a pair of bright yellow boots nobody could buy. That’s what Ye wore to Yeezy’s office in Calabasas on 7 Apr 2020, and a BACKGRID photographer caught him on the way in. It’s a plain outfit until you get to the feet.

A month earlier, those boots had been on the Yeezy Season 8 runway in Paris. It was the first time Ye had been seen in anything from that show, Highsnobiety noted. According to Hypebeast, Season 8 didn’t even have a launch date yet. He’d skipped the wait and worn them to work.

Paris in March, Calabasas in April

Season 8 showed three new boots in early March 2020, and this was one of them. On the runway it had gone out on a female model, so Ye’s pair put an end to any idea it’d be women’s only, Hypebeast said. Highsnobiety described a short puffer upper sitting inside a shell like a duck boot, almost a silicone cover, on a heavily serrated outsole.

The fleece wasn’t his own line. It was Martine Rose, from her Spring/Summer 2018 collection, and Hypebeast ran the two runway shots side by side.

November 2021: the Knit Runner Boot in Sulfur

The name came later. The low Knit Runner released in September 2021. On 13 Nov 2021 the boot followed through Yeezy Supply, in Sulfur. Highsnobiety tied it straight back to Paris. The boot had debuted at the Season 8 show, it said, and it’d been on Ye’s feet several times over the past year. It’s the Knit Runner with a lugged outsole and a high strap across the ankle, and it’s waterproof.

It sold out straight away. Not everyone was sure what they’d seen, though. The comments under Highsnobiety’s post ran from “I cant tell if this is parody” to people hoping to win a raffle.

Ye had answered that one in April 2020, on his walk into work.