West woos America
The rapper wants to make his shoes in the US and create jobs
A few fun facts about Kanye West: He’s running for president in 2024, he recited colour psychology to wife Kim Kardashian West as she sat in a morning bath Thursday, and he was fired at 16 for shoplifting at the Gap where he worked.
West, with Kim in tow, let loose with those pearls during a surprise 35-minute appearance before a crowd of about 500 at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival.
Accompanied on stage by Steven Smith, lead designer of West’s shoe brand Yeezy, West dug into the nuts and bolts of the fashion industry. He said he plans to make his manufacturing eco-friendly, moving it all to South and North America in the next two years, including at his 4,000-acre ranch in Cody, Wyoming.
When it comes to big ideas, West called Yeezy the “Apple of apparel,” and he revisited his call for African Americans to not flock to the Democratic Party as a voting bloc and to reject that they’re an en masse consumer demographic.
West also broke down exactly what happened with those dome homes he was building on his sprawling property in Los Angeles, complaining that authorities went to the media to “let everyone know that you were tearing down Kanye’s domes” because one was 10 feet higher than codes allowed.
In conversation with Fast Company senior writer Mark Wilson, West referenced everybody from filmmaker Wes Anderson to Leonardo Da Vinci to Jesus Christ, but the focus was on fashion.
He said he plans to move the industry forward on sustainability, starting with hydroponic, cotton, wheat and hemp farming in Cody, along with searching for ways to make the dyeing process less harmful to the environment.