After months of teasing, the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collection is finally here. The monochromatic collab is packed with sweats, basic separates and outerwear, all done in faded shades of gray and black. It blends together Balenciaga’s recent moto-inspired aesthetic with Ye’s penchant for oversized proportions.
Announced nearly six months ago, Ye announced his partnership with Balenciaga Creative Director Demna Gvasalia through Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga. With Ye’s infatuation with the Demna-lead fashion house over the last year, their almost fateful partnership is no surprise and is now available for purchase.
According to The Cut, Gap was long Ye’s dream—he worked there as a teenager, and in 2015 professed he’d like to be “the Steve Jobs of the Gap”—and the artist’s obsessive standards and rotating cast of collaborators have brought us, in the year and half since he took the job, a boxy hoodie and an outrageous puffer. Both these pieces, months after their release, continue to dominate online discourse as few fashion products do. In January, Ye announced he was partnering with longtime friend Demna, the newly mononymous creative director of Balenciaga, for Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga. Still, the release of two articles of clothing over the past 18 months felt like a drip when the world expected a firehose.
But as of last week, Ye’s output suddenly quadrupled: His first drop of pieces designed in tandem with Demna arrived online at yeezygap.com. (Perhaps not so coincidentally, Ye’s Donda 2 listening party was held the same night in Miami.) The eight pieces, mostly in cropped but oversized silhouettes, include logo T-shirts, one of which purports to be seamless; a long-sleeved tee; a sweatshirt in smoggy gray; an oversized stonewashed, frayed denim jacket and matching jeans; and a pair of disarmingly anonymous sweatpants. A dove skims over the back of several garments, which “represents an unnamed hope for the future,” per an accompanying press release.
The clothes, as the release explains, are “timeless silhouettes translated through the lens of Ye and Demna’s shared vision of utilitarian design.” Or as Harper’s Bazaar puts it, “a dystopian capsule wardrobe of freaked basics.”
Yeezy Gap released one collection in 2020, featuring the round puffer jacket and a cropped cotton hoodie, and now the Demna partnership has furthered the line of essentials. Bringing a dark palette to the All-American brand, denim and t-shirts are made to be oversized while the signature Balenciaga cat-suit is brought to life for Gap with a company logo on the center of the chest. You can’t mention Ye without workwear, and the collection doesn’t forget it, including sateen overalls, trousers, and parkas. Black (in various shades) is the color of this collection, with gems of light-wash denim, green, and gray, making it completely adaptable for your essential basics.
The collection comes soon after Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2023 show in New York City that revealed a collaboration with Adidas and the fashion house’s take on the three-stripe sportswear. Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga will probably be selling out fast, even while available at yeezygap.com and Balenciaga retailers FarFetch, MyTheresa, and LuisaViaRoma.
—
Photo Credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com