April 10, 2015
Kanye West is the subject of a profile in The New York Times' T magazine—and this time, he's in the paper of record because of his fashion line that was unveiled just a few months ago (feels like a year ago, man—the passage of time! It's a trip). A particularly amazing detail of this piece is when he shows the Times' Jon Caramanica potential single art of the shattered facade of the Chicago Saint Laurent show, after it was robbed (alluding to his infamous feud with YSL creative director Hedi Slimane). There's plenty of gold in here, and you should read the whole thing in full—but we've rounded up the quotes for you in the meantime.
1. (On drawing levels between his fashion aspirations and the success of his Yeezus tour) "I would scream — 'Look at this mountain I just made! You don't think I can make a T-shirt? Look at everyone in the audience — we're selling $300,000 worth of T-shirts every night!'"
2. (On getting the fashion world's attention) "I one hundred percent had to scream. I tried it every other way."
3. "Before the Internet, music was really expensive. People would use a rack of CDs to show class, to show they had made it. Right now, people use clothes to telegraph that. I want to destroy that. The very thing that supposedly made me special — the jacket that no one could get, the direct communications with the designers — I want to give that to the world."
4. "I dreamed, since I was a little kid, of having my own store where I could curate every shoe, sweatshirt and color. I have sketches of it. I cried over the idea of having my own store."
5. "I'm not a celebrity, I'm an activist. The fact that when I see truth it's really hard for me to sit back and just allow it to happen in front of me on my clock makes me, a lot of times, a bad celebrity."
6. "I feel like now I have an amazing wife, a supersmart child and the opportunity to create in two major fields. Before I had those outlets, my ego was all I had."
7. "I have this table in my new house. They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it. But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked. I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through."
8. "I gained because I had the privilege to be educated. I had enough of a value to be able to go into debt, and that was a blessing. Some people don't even have the opportunity to be able to go into debt."
9. (On meeting Ralph Lauren) "Do you know what he said when he did that? 'This is my son.' And I was thinking, 'I knew it! I knew Ralph was my daddy!'"
Lead image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
