Balenciaga is cutting ties with Kanye West

It was only a matter of time before Balenciaga decided to do something to revise his relationship with Kanye West, who had been at the center of controversy for weeks first for the "White Lives Matter" t-shirt worn during the Parisian Yeezy show and then for a series of statements posted online on Instagram and Twitter - before both social media banned it. Despite the lack of official statements by the brand, the link between Balenciaga and West - which opened the latest Demna show - required countermeasures to distance themselves from what the rapper has done and said in the last period. Countermeasures have arrived, albeit in a silent and almost imperceptible way. The photo relating to West's look in the Spring 2023 show has been deleted from Vogue Runway, as well as from the Balenciaga website where, of course, the section dedicated to Yeezy Gap Engineered By Balenciaga previously online is no longer present. Furthermore, the same collaboration is no longer available on online retailers such as MyTheresa, LuisaViaRoma, and Farfetch. In addition, the brand exclusively released to WWD effectively formalizing the end of its relationship with Kanye West: «Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.»

A series of actions that make Balenciaga's intentions very clear: to distance himself from Kanye West. If the move of the Kering group brand was both due and obvious, on the other hand, Demna is in a decidedly different situation. The relationship between the creative director with the founder of Yeezy is long and deep, born years ago and continued over the years. West has often referred to himself as "Demna's straight husband" and has not only been a permanent presence in the front row of the brand for years but has also been its ambassador and partly the reason for its commercial success. In an interview published by the New York Times last year, Demna described her relationship with Kanye West as "a very intense creative exchange" and on several occasions, she had not failed to underline how the relationship with West was intense and daily. It is therefore difficult to think that Gvasalia can distance himself from Kanye, while it seems more likely that the brand will lead him to distance himself, at least from a business point of view, from Kanye West.