Everything
The most anticipated threeway in fashion since Halston seems to be happening – Kanye West / Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga has been confirmed. There’s even a logo and everything.
The announcement was made early this morning via Ye’s Instagram with a photo of what looks to be a contract signed by reps for the three brands – Yeezy, Balenciaga and GAP. (Kanye must have been in a good mood after his much publicised, documented and even documented date with Julia Fox).
There was also a soft reveal of a simple black and white logo riffing off the GAP blue square and Helvetica Neue font floating around Twitter.
Collabs, hacks, remixes, partnerships were a fixture of 2021. To the point where it felt like a week didn’t go by where two brands, or a brand and an influencer, weren’t soft-launching a collection in tandem. In November, Balenciaga even launched a capsule with Gucci dubbed the Hacker Project featuring a cross-pollination of logos and colourway motifs.
The Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga, however, feels more predestined.
While the hype over Demna and Kanye has to be fair intensified in the past 12 months, the friendship between the duo has been slowly brewing since the Georgian designer was spotted at the Life of Pablo listening party held in Madison Square Garden back in 2016.
More recently, Demna was brought on board as the creative director for Ye’s most recent album and event, Donda.
BREAKING: all the rumors were true. "YEEZY GAP ENGINEERED BY BALENCIAGA" is happening. Yup, Demna is coming to the Gap, thanks to Ye. It's the meeting of the mononyms! What will it look like? When is it happening? Who knows? All we have is the logo. Collective meltdown is assured pic.twitter.com/FI7nkXLXUo
— Vanessa Friedman (@VVFriedman) January 7, 2022
Currently planned to drop in June this year, this will no doubt give the powerhouse trio enough time to drum up some seriously frantic hype around the collection.
As to what the clothes will look like is anyone’s guess. But the biggest detail that folks have seemed to have latched on is the Balenciaga and Yeezy product available at GAP pricing. Whether that’s the actual case remains to be seen.
On the Yeezy x Gap Instagram, a preview of the collection reads like the daily wardrobe we’ve been seeing from Ye for the past few months: puffer jacket, hoodie, some biker-inspired boots, sunglasses, all in black.
Maybe even more interesting is what the project will resale for. Yeezy x GAP hoodies are already appearing on resale website StockX for 50 percent over the retail So we can probably expect some eye-watering mark ups of the exclusive collab almost minutes after official stores sell out.
