Kayne West was in Maine with some friends who were watching Fox News when they saw the reports that he was selling clothes out of garbage bags at the Gap.
Social media was ablaze with criticism, slamming Kanye, who goes by the name Ye, for supposedly being insensitive to the homeless by seeming to mock them by stuffing piles of Yeezy Gap sweatshirts, hoodies and joggers inside big black plastic bags for shoppers to rummage through like the less fortunate scrummaging for food from a trash can on a corner street.
But the social media mavens were wrong. It wasn’t true.
The bags were not trash bags, but large, tough lawn or construction type bags that were supposed to be arranged as a statement about the unnecessary exclusivity of some fashion brands.
Ye wanted to speak out about the misconception and set the record straight, which is how I ended up at 6 in the morning standing with the iconic musician turned fashion designer in the Gap flagship store in Times Square.
"The whole point why I came to the Gap is to make egalitarian clothing," he explained. "I don't like hangers. Back when I used to work at the Gap, I used to sit and have to fold and make everything super neat. And I just felt like that gets fairly pretentious and classist."
It was as simple as that.
Ye's working the floor led him, years and billions of dollars later, to create a new shopping experience that he says was unfairly criticized by those who too easily dismiss the dreams of artists and disregard the sanctity of the creative process. He felt he had to speak out to explain his vision... and that of others, whose ideas challenge society's conventional standards despite opposition.
"They had no idea, you know, what you go through as an artist to innovate as a disruptor and just to fight to do something new. The things that people laugh at first, that then become standards," he notes. "It's just interesting, how inhumane it is, just the level of the lack of appreciation for our artists. And then you wonder why artists go to Europe to create or wonder why China is taking our industry as Americans. We have to treat each other better. We've got to respect our mavericks. We've got to respect the people that are the heads of industry who are attempting to do something, that are doing something to bring our country back."
Ye says people just jumped to conclusions when they saw on social media what was falsely identified as garbage bags, and that the lack of appreciation for unconventional, tradition-shattering ideas is troubling.
"This is a moment of innovation. Now if you try to clown the innovators, you are going to make the other innovators less brave. We're not going to want to step out on a limb and do anything that's exciting or do anything that changes anything. But that is what we are here to do....I'm an innovator, and I am not here to sit up and apologize about my ideas. That's exactly what the media tries to do, make us apologize for any idea that doesn't fall under exactly the way they want us to think."
"Don't clown the creators."
Ye is challenging the typical retail experience and the established presentation of fashion that we are all used to, such as the rows of neatly hanging clothes arranged by size or the shelves stacked with perfectly folded and pristine items. He decided to turn the status quo inside out.
"My idea is to create a type of wardrobe where you can get dressed in the dark, so it is one less thing to think about. I've told people lots of times that I am inspired by Henry Ford, I am inspired by Steve Jobs, I am inspired by Donald Judd. Artists have simplified things for a living, for a happier life. The process is actually simpler because every time you take it off a hanger, then a sales representative has to put it back on a hanger or has to fold it perfectly for you to think that it has value. Why do we place value on things, just because it's hanging up or just because it is in a traditional way? This is a non-traditional approach."
After our interview, Ye chatted with the Gap Yeezy associates who gathered around him. They took photos together before he quietly left to fly to London to continue to work on his clothing line.
KANYE WEST MOCKED FOR SELLING YEEZY GAP CLOTHING COLLECTION OUT OF WHAT LOOK LIKE TRASH BAGS
Hours later I went back to the store to check out shoppers' reactions to the large overstuffed bags, lined up in pairs in the store's front lobby, filled with the Yeezy offerings...and not a hanger in sight.
I walked in and saw dozens of shoppers gleefully hovering over the large bags of Ye’s sweat shirts emblazoned with a white dove, holding the sweatshirts and hoodies up to their chests to see if they fit, rummaging through the bags like excited children diving into presents on Christmas morning.
That’s when it hit me.
I was actually watching live performance art, a vibrant canvas created by a misunderstood artist, whose subjects were unaware that they were participating in a shared creative experience since they thought they were merely considering items from Ye's fashion line. And in doing so Ye's unconventional vision had become the reality, which is what artists strive to achieve.
Fox News Producer Tamara Gitt produced this report.
