When Kanye West discovered Demna Gvasalia

It was only a matter of time before Kanye West and Demna's relationship led Ye to walk in a Balenciaga show. This one seen yesterday during the Spring 23 show is just the latest addition to a relationship of friendship and professional esteem that began in 2015, but it is only the latest piece of a relationship of friendship and professional esteem born in 2015, when West chose the Georgian designer to be part of the creative team called to create Yeezy Season 1 , joining what today, more than six years later, seems almost an all-star team in which Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo took their first steps in the fashion system.

Just like Abloh and many other designers, Demna's name is also one that West believed in from the beginning, openly declaring his love for Vetements and his work. Just a few months before Gvasalia's appointment as creative director of Balenciaga, Kanye had expressed his love for Demna's work, calling him in an interview with Vanity Fair "the Number 1" just a few months before the New York Times commented on his new role in the French fashion house talking about “a relative unknown”.

Definitely a severe definition for those who, before arriving at the court of Balenciaga, saw in his curriculum the names of Walter Van Beirendonck, Louis Vuitton, and Margiela in a path that in 2014 led him to launch Vetements together with his brother Guram offering to the fashion system something different enough to be able to convince West not only to choose it for his dream team of designers but also to become the main supporter of Gvasalia's work. During the 2015 Paris Fashion Week Kanye toured for two days in a row with the black oversize hoodie by Vetements immediately transforming it into a must-have for all his fans. It was on that occasion, waiting for the penultimate show of Raf Simons at Dior, that West had himself immortalized with Lorde in a photo that over the years has become almost more famous than its protagonists.

There, in that game of proportions in which an oversized hoodie joined a pair of skinny pants, Kanye's flair for finding and enhancing talents was revealed once again. If the names of Virgil Abloh, Samuel Ross, Heron Preston and Matthew Williams are now usually associated with that of West, his relationship with Demna Gvasalia seems in some ways even more complex and exciting than those undertaken with his colleagues and that, after Kanye's guest at Balenciaga's Haute Couture show last July is preparing to welcome a new and significant chapter in Donda's release party.