This apartment (not race) inspired Kanye’s Yeezy show

In the wake of Yeezy Season 1, which was released in stores last week and hailed a commerical success shortly after, Kanye West has revealed the real source of inspiration behind his second collection, Yeezy Season 2. 

While many interpreted his use of skin-coloured fabrics as a statement on race, it turns out that the colour palette for the collection was the architecture of Italian architect, designer and master of contemporary minimalism, Claudio Silvestrin.

The rapper-turned-fashion-designer lives in an apartment designed by Silvestrin, opened up about the subject in a new interview with Dirk Standen for Vanity Fair.

“It had nothing to do with race,” he says. “It was only colours of human beings and the way these palettes of people work together and really just stressing the importance of colour, the importance of that to our sanity, these Zen, monochrome palettes. I’ve stayed in a Claudio Silvestrin apartment since I was 26, and I love those types of palettes and that’s my opinion.” 

Earlier this month he refuted allegations that the show was a political statement, saying, “I think it’s racist when white people assume that when a black person uses colour that it’s a political statement... the assumption that my artistic expression of clothing has something to do with race or politics... is racist in itself.”

Elsewhere in the interview with Standen, West reveals more about his approach to design, saying, “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.”

Check out the gallery above to see the apartment and the one below for Yeezy Season 2.