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| Kanye West at his Yeezy Season 3 event during New York Fashion Week. Credit Andrew Kelly/Reuters |
The rest of the fashion world may be talking about “a clear call for change” (in the words
of the Boston Consulting Group study commissioned by the Council of
Fashion Designers of America) and the “danger of designer creative
burnout” and the need to slow things down (after a month of shows,
doesn’t less seem like more?) and so on and so forth. But that industry
disrupter/tweet stormer/creative megalith otherwise known as Kanye West has a different idea about how the future of fashion, or at least his fashion future, may look.
Over the weekend, he took to Twitter, as is his wont, to reveal his plan: “No more fashion calendar... I’m going Mad Max... 6 collections a year...3 albums a year,” he wrote. Six collections!
It’s
not entirely clear how that might look, since Mr. West’s thoughts then
took a different direction, but chances are that there will probably be
“homeless sweaters” involved. “I believe in my ripped homeless
sweaters!!!” he posted
earlier. (In case you were wondering, a “homeless sweater” is the knit
equivalent of distressed jeans: stretched-out and with some judiciously
placed holes. Kendall Jenner wore Mr. West’s version to his New York Fashion Week show last month.)
And
Mr. West never paid much attention to the fashion calendar in the first
place, scheduling his show during fashion week without going through
the CFDA, and often conflicting with other designers, much to their
chagrin.
Of
course, six collections is not as radical and “Mad Max”-like as it
might sound. At the moment, six collections a year is pretty much par
for the course at couture houses such as Chanel, Dior and Valentino.
Officially, that is, and for women’s wear: two couture, two runway, two
pre-collections. Some brands also have men’s wear, Chanel has the
métiers d’art, and then there’s the occasional special one-off, so they
probably do more than six a year. When John Galliano had his implosion
at Dior, it was said he was working on something along the lines of 16
collections a year, as he was also designing for his own line, which
included women’s and men’s wear.
Then there are mass brands like H&M and Zara, which seem to drop a collection a month.
Still,
given that Mr. West’s last fashion reveal was in February, his
statement would mean we are in for another collection from him around
April, so we’ll find out then what shape this is all taking. Mr. West’s
fans certainly seemed psyched about the idea, since, as of Monday
morning, his tweet had gotten 60,000 likes.
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