Kanye’s Yeezy Season 4 collection wasn’t bad — but it wasn’t worth the wait either
Reporting from New York — Any member of the fashion industry press attending and covering Kanye West’s last-minute fashion show Wednesday — adjacent to the ruins of a smallpox hospital on the tip of Roosevelt Island — invested a minimum of five hours to do so.
We bring this up from the start because that time sink, in combination with the U.N.-worthy credential checkpoints and a start time that was delayed an hour-and-a-half made it nearly impossible for the collection to be worth the investment of time and energy it took to see it in person.
But here’s the thing: The Yeezy Spring 2017 runway collection, the fourth between West and Adidas, served up a decent range of athleisurely pieces for women that reflected a progression from Season 1 (we weren’t in town to take in Seasons 2 and 3).
The unmistakable star of the runway collection, presented outside in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, was the high-heeled, thigh-high boot — served up in different color and fabric combinations, including white leather and see-through plastic. The clothes, rooted in a muted color palette of beige, black and gray with the occasional pop of camouflage, were either of the body-hugging second-skin variety or voluminous, drapey and frequently hooded outerwear.
Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 4 collection runway finale.
In the first category were thigh-grazing slip dresses, clingy jersey pencil skirts, knit sweater dresses and under-breast-baring workout tops paired with bike shorts. In the second category were oversized zip-front hoodies, padded, parka-like jackets, roomy-to-the-point-of-poncho camouflage-patterned jackets and shearling-trimmed leather jackets as well as some roomy cutoff sweatpants with drawstring waistbands.
No, it wasn’t anything close to high fashion, but, like the collaboration’s past collections, it keys into the prevailing athleisure trend, and it’s as wearable (but for the pair of model-hobbling stiletto boots) as anything we’ve seen from the partnership. Unfortunately, given the circumstances surrounding the execution of the show itself, that’s a point that’s likely to get overshadowed.
And that, in our opinion, is a shame.
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