On the left: West gets ready to present new music at the Facebook headquarters in Fall '10. On the Right : West's (middle) dons his new style with pals, Aziz Anzari (left) and Kid Cudi (right). (Image courtesy of Complex magazine)
Only five months in and the fashion movement begun by Kanye West is already coming to an end.
The fashion initiative, started by West this past August, was said to have been created initially as a way to raise the level of sophistication within the rap and hip-hop industry, according to Luxist.com. Everyone involved in West’s G.O.O.D. Music label, including Kid Cudi, Common and John Legend, were forced to dress in this particular way.
Although this style often involved expensive, tailored suits and a highly refined sense of style, the fashion initiative ironically referred to the Rosewood Massacre of 1923, in which a white mob killed several black males and destroyed many homes belonging to African Americans because a young, white woman accused a African American male of raping her.
Choosing such a thought-provoking title for such a fashion style was a clever ploy by West to draw attention to his radically different style of clothing; he was previously known for his very preppy, over-the-top style choices.
Yet beyond all of this, I believe that West had secret motives for such a radical change in his appearance .
Initially, West’s album was going to be released on the same day as his label-partners, Kid Cudi, Big Sean and Consequence. To help get some sort of positive buzz going about this G.O.O.D. Music group that were all about to release records simultaneously, West began this movement that was distinctive from any of his other endeavors.
Although all of this fell through and each artist has released albums at different times, West used the public’s intrigue about his new and highly-publicized fashion choices to help keep mainstream America interested in his music, especially with artists such as Drake and Eminem taking away much of the hip-hop spotlight through huge successes in the early fall of 2010.
Yet nowadays with his latest album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” winning over critics after being released in November and with West finding himself not being involved in any negative, highly-publicized incidents in recent months, he has now reemerged with much more of a laid-back, classic sense of style that seems to better fit the hip-hop mogul.
West constantly changing all aspects of his public persona, more specifically now in his taste of style, is truly a unique and creative way for a hip-hop star to keep America interested for a long period of time that does not involve any real sort of backlash from mainstream American media.
Perhaps if West just changes his outfits more often, then incidents like the one involving Taylor Swift at the VMA’s in 2007, would be a thing of the past. We can only hope!
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