In a recent interview with Highsnobiety and other select fashion outlets who were lucky enough to get a private invite to Kanye West’s unscheduled Paris Fashion Week womenswear show, West dropped this gem on the influence of YEEZY brand on streetwear as a whole,
“We’ve presented so many things that have influenced color palettes and shapes of shoes, like the shape of the 350s that have become the most iconic shoe of the past 15 years. Now we have all these new slides that we’re doing, and you’ll see that these shapes will start to affect other designs.”
He’s absolutely not wrong. While we’re going to go ahead and wait it out to see if the YEEZY Slides actually end up as popular as West thinks they’ll be, the YEEZY BOOST 350 is probably the most influential and certainly the most popular modern sneaker on the market right now. According to the research firm NPD, sales of the 350 grew six times over the fourth quarter of 2018 alone. Business Insider reports that the silhouette was one of the ten best selling shoes of 2019 and considering we spent almost every week of summer 2019 debating if we should include yet another colorway of the 350 V2 in our weekly sneaker column, we feel comfortable agreeing with Kanye here. The 350 is definitely right up with the most popular sneaker silhouettes ever — the Nike Air Max 270, Adidas UltraBOOST, and Nike Air Force 1.
Later in the interview, Kanye also revealed that all the wool for the upcoming YEEZY season 8 is coming straight from his recently purchased sheep ranch in Wyoming. “90 percent of this collection is muslin in its original fabric. We’ve been looking at how we can create a suede effect and how we can dye it. This is all experimental. Each one of the pieces here is in its infant stage.”
It’s reassuring that what Kanye had on display at Monday’s womenswear show is in its “infant stage” because there isn’t much to catch the eye here (the towel-looking sports bra is, admittedly, cool). YEEZY Season 8’s womenswear collection seems to go heavy on the beige and white color schemes of recent YEEZY releases, but… puffier. Like bro, what is up with that puffer jacket? How cold is it in Wyoming? Drop that jacket in orange and you have Kenny from South Park, and we all know how Ye feels about South Park.
Check out shots from the YEEZY Season 8 Womenswear show below.
