Kanye West’s Yeezy GAP Deal Comes Under Fire

Kanye West is one of the most creative artists of all time, and he deserves all the credit he gets, especially the credit he believes he deserves. As the rapper signed a 10-year deal with GAP, a clothing retailer corporation in order to “modern, elevated basics for men, women and kids at accessible price points” as per his own creative vision, there are some who dislike the decision.

One of such individuals in the opposition of the deal is GAP’s former CEO, Mickey Drexler. Being a former member of the Apple’s board of directors as well, he sees the decision as something which should not have been. He revealed to Yahoo! Finance:

I probably shouldn’t say this but I told him he shouldn’t do the deal because it doesn’t make any sense in my opinion. I have a lot of friends at Gap still, but it doesn’t work for someone like Kanye. He is not a corporate person and Gap is a big corporation.

While acknowledging the Kanye’s designer jacket made a huge profit for GAP by selling out overnight and hauling a whopping $7 million to the giant corporation, he still has his disagreements.

So, I know the jacket sold out. They did $7 million on the jacket overnight. [Kanye] is a smart guy but he shouldn’t have done it. And I don’t think they should have done it, either.

Kanye West, however, seems to be fond of the former CEO, and has said words of praises about him in his 2015 interview with Vanity Fair. Ye said:

I say things like I want to be creative director for the Gap, but I just got to give credit to the people who do creative direction at the Gap. I’ve got to give super-props to Mickey Drexler. I know he’s not at the Gap anymore. That’s a talent. The same way [Azzedine] Alaia has a talent for what he does and he’s a master at it, and Nicolas Ghesquière is a master at what he does, Mickey Drexler is a master of that game. Just like [A.P.C. designer] Jean Touitou.

This thing is just as important as the designer that can create something that’s more showy, to create something that feels invisible. That was one of the points for the collection today and one of the points I want to make in apparel, period. I want the clothes to almost go away, to almost be invisible, to be one with the personality. You know when you see people’s dogs look like them? I want people’s clothes to look like them.

Kanye West has almost 2-decades long ties with the retailer corporation, having worked with them in 2004, and even mentioned them in the verses of his song “Spaceship” from 2004’s The College Dropout album, singing: “Let’s go back, back to the Gap/Look at my check—wasn’t no scratch/So if I stole, wasn’t my fault/Yeah, I stole—never got caught.”

What’s your take on the Yeezy brand x GAP collaboration? Sound off in the comments!