Balenciaga Drops Kanye West Over Racist Comments

Balenciaga Officially Cut Ties With Kanye West Over Anti-Semitic Comments

Balenciaga has officially cut ties with Kanye West following the rapper’s string of antisemitic and offensive remarks.

Following its third-quarter earnings report Thursday, the fashion label’s parent company Kering said in a statement to WWD, “Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.”

Balenciaga began distancing itself from West following his controversial appearance on the podcast Drink Champs released last week, where he falsely claimed that George Floyd wasn’t murdered but killed by fentanyl and made even more antisemitic remarks.

 

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On Oct. 17, the fashion giant issued a statement saying West’s runway look from Balenciaga’s Spring 2023 show at Paris Fashion Week had been deleted from Vogue Runway, as well as the Balenciaga website.

Balenciaga said it had removed a section on its website dedicated to the three Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collaborations, which launched earlier this year. Those items were also no longer available on other online retailers.

With Balenciaga severing ties, West has lost one of his closest and oldest partners in the luxury fashion world.

The two have been entwined for years, largely thanks to West’s long-standing relationship with the fashion house’s creative director Demna Gvasalia, which dates back to around 2014, when Vestments — the label Demna founded with his brother, Guram Gvasalia — broke through in the fashion world. In 2015, the Gvaslia brothers consulted West on his Yeezy Season 1 line, and by the end of the year, Demna was tapped to head up Balenciaga.