The artist, who now goes by Ye, spoke about his world-building vision and what happens after Gap as he prepares for his Monday night runway show during Paris Fashion Week.
Ye is thinking as he talks, putting it together, producing. I postulate a synthesis: “So a uniting force for people who might be considered unconventional as they are developing, but for whom unconventionality is actually the superpower?” He replies: “I like the way you put it.” So how does that — an anti-uniform for the anti-conventional — translate into clothing? “It’s leaning into the shape of how I see this future world… this alternate world. But in high school.
In our chat, we cover various stages of Ye’s integration — not always seamless — into Paris’s fashion world. It began in 2009 when he famously arrived on the scene with Virgil Abloh, Don C, Taz Arnold, Chris Julian and Fonzworth Bentley. Tommy Ton got the shot. It was the beginning of a paradigm shift for the industry. Says Ye: “We loved it. We love it. We had our idea and our new attitude. And the world agreed with us: it was like the invention of rock‘n’roll: it was a new genre.
Ye sees his history and future in the fashion business as a three-chord progression. The first was that moment of insertion, back in 2009. “We fought to get the credit from the fashion guard and elites.” The second was when he and the many other talents he helped seed — crucially Abloh, but others too — started delivering. “We fought to get the audience and give them the product.” And the third? “To clean up the companies.