Ye gatecrashed Paris Fashion Week with YZY SZN 9 and a “White Lives Matter” shirt

Ye added his own show to Paris Fashion Week on 3 Oct 2022. YZY SZN 9 wasn’t on the official schedule, and WWD’s Joelle Diderich reported that it clashed with smaller brands who’d spent six months working toward their slots. It went up in a vacant building near the Arc de Triomphe, for an invited crowd Hypebeast put at 50.

It was his first collection since ending the Gap deal, and he pitched it as a fresh start. “We’re starting our own house tonight,” he said, WWD reported. The show is remembered for one shirt, and for the three weeks that followed it.

The collection

It’s a collection Ye designed with Shayne Oliver, Hood By Air’s founder. A children’s choir from his Donda Academy sang as the models came out, and Naomi Campbell, Givenchy’s Matthew Williams and Michèle Lamy walked. WWD listed hooded bodysuits in concrete greys, a black quilted rain poncho and a crinkled grey dress with bulky shoulders. Hypebeast added puffers cinched at the chest and 3D-printed boots that reached the shin.

Alexandre Arnault, John Galliano, Demna and Riccardo Tisci were in the room. Ye had opened Balenciaga’s show the day before.

The shirt

One top had Pope John Paul II on the front and “White Lives Matter” on the back. Ye wore it, Candace Owens wore it in white, and models wore versions of it. The Anti-Defamation League says it’s a white supremacist slogan that started in 2015 as a racist response to Black Lives Matter.

Backstage, Ye wouldn’t expand on it, WWD reported, beyond saying the shirt spoke for itself. On Instagram he posted that Black Lives Matter “was a scam”.

The fallout

Jaden Smith tweeted “I Had To Dip Lol”, then “Black Lives Matter”. Marc Lamont Hill called the shirt “disgusting, dangerous, and irresponsible”. Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Vogue’s global fashion editor at large, criticised the show online, and Ye answered with Instagram posts about her. Gigi Hadid defended her, and on 4 Oct Vogue said its editor had been “personally targeted and bullied”. The two met privately that day, and Ye said afterwards they’d apologised to each other.

On 6 Oct adidas put its Yeezy partnership under review. On 25 Oct, after antisemitic remarks Ye made later that month, it ended the partnership immediately. The company called his recent comments and actions “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”.