As anyone who has had access to the internet in the last 24 hours knows, people are mad at Kanye West. Again. No, he didn't disrespect Taylor Swift or release another weird video with naked wax figures, but he did seriously piss off a lot of fashion industry insiders at his Yeezy Season 4 show — including his own models.
Here are the basics: In true Kanye #fashion (sorry, I had to), the show was not so much a show as a spectacle. As Stella Bugbee of The Cut reported, before the event, guests were given very few details other than being told to meet at a random location on the West Side of Manhattan at 1:30 p.m. ET where they would be transported by bus to the show.
After sitting in traffic for an hour, guests arrived at an abandoned hospital that used to house smallpox patients on Roosevelt Island where they were herded into lines and forced through, as Alyssa Vingan Klein wrote on Fashionista, "more security checkpoints than I've ever had to at the airport." After waiting another hour in a holding area, Klein reported, they were eventually brought to their seats, which were outside and unshaded under the beating, 90-plus-degree New York City sun, where they sat without water as they waited for the show to start... an hour late.
As bad as the experience was for the guests — which included Anna Wintour and other top fashion editors — things were reportedly much worse for the models.
When guests took their seats, they were greeted by hundreds of models standing silently in a performance-art-esque formation around the runway... also under the hot, hot New York City sun as the temperature has hovered between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit with no water. At a certain point, it became too much, and, as Gabrielle Bernardini reported for Us Weekly, some of the models sat down in the grass.
According to some reports, one woman allegedly fainted due to the heat and it fell upon the guests to help her.
When the show finally started, things only got worse. One model struggled to make it down the runway in an enormous puffer coat and thigh high boots, which Bugbee described as "disturbing to witness." Eventually, a man from the audience got up and helped the model down the runway.
According to a Tweet from Kylie Jenner, the model's heel broke while she was walking... but that wasn't the only shoe-tastrophe to take place during the show. Amina Blue (who happens to be Tyga's ex girlfriend) had a hard time walking in her high heels, and eventually gave up and took them off halfway down the runway.
When the "spectacle" had finally finished, it was 5:30 p.m. in the afternoon... a full four hours after the whole thing began.
Bustle reached out to West's team for comment, and is waiting for a response.
While the clothes from Yeezy Season 4 really are pretty awesome — especially the thigh high boots — the collection was sadly completely overshadowed by all of the drama that went down at the show. If this is what people mean when they say "beauty is pain," I think the industry — and the internet — agree that they are out.
