Still, Gvasalia thinks a lot about Westian themes: religion, outsiders, crowds, uniforms.
At the show, the first few rows submerged-a terrifying comment on global warming or the inevitable decline of fashion’s elite staged on the eve of the pandemic.) West has a similar proclivity for grand visual gestures, but gets there by turning his most intimate psychodrama into art. (Over the past few days and then while performing, West wore a striking, spike-covered jacket that Gvasalia showed in early March 2020 in Paris. Gvasalia is a designer who embraces the power of image on a grand scale, seeing magnetic menace in the ubiquitous. The trip was, as Peter Schjeldahl once described the procedure of limo-to-private jet travel for Art Basel Miami, “like being poured from one glass into another.”) (Team Kanye offered to fly GQ to Atlanta for the night. Last weekend, West’s camp announced that Gvasalia would creative direct the event, bringing his fashion finesse to Kanye’s latest spectacle. West attended Gvasalia’s Balenciaga couture debut in early July, and in the meantime, West and Gvasalia have been speaking at length about West’s new album’s themes: protection, generally, and his late mother Donda, specifically, who died in 2007 and for whom the album is named. That made them think they should do more together, those close to the pair say. After DMX’s death in April, the two collaborated on a T-shirt that raised a million dollars for the late rapper’s family. West has known Demna Gvasalia since the designer’s early Vetements days- he practically discovered the Balenciaga boss, championing him before nearly anyone else in the fashion industry and recruiting him into the Yeezy design studio for Season 1-but they seem to have grown much closer in the past few months. This was his second go at the listening party, and the most immediate difference between this evening and the one he hosted two weeks ago was the involvement of another fashion figure who’s basically monymous: Demna. He was there to finish his album Donda, which he initially intended to release following an event in the same arena on July 22. By that time, Kanye had famously spent the previous two weeks living in a performatively modest cinderblock room in the bowels of the stadium, sleeping in a twin bed mattress on the floor with a white comforter and few furnishings.