Kanye West drops Yeezy X Gap item for his birthday

The full launch for Kanye West’s Yeezy line with Gap was recently pushed back to sometime later this year; but the brand is releasing an appetiser for the rapper’s birthday.

Behold, the very first item from the new partnership: a slightly puffy, metallic sky-blue “round jacket” that’s available for purchase at Gap’s website now.

The wait for the first crumbs of Yeezy Gap has been long. Kanye first announced the collaboration in June of last year. The first image Kanye put out to tease the collection a year ago looks similar to this round jacket in a bright raspberry red. Like any good mall brand, Kanye and Gap may focus on a few foundational items before putting them out in a range of colours. This jacket is made out of recycled nylon, costs $200, and is only available in the US.

Although it’s just a single piece, the jacket is getting a lot of hype from Kanye West. Like he does with new sneaker releases, Kanye has been wearing the new jacket out in Los Angeles; serving as both prototype tester, trendsetter, and anticipation builder.

ALSO READ: Kanye West’s Yeezy x Gap collection to debut in June

Kanye and the Gap are also projecting images of the jacket onto buildings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (This sounds mighty familiar to what Kanye did when he was rolling out his album Yeezus in 2013.) Gap has also deleted every single one of their Instagram posts, leaving one single image of the new Yeezy jacket.

Fans have been patient for the arrival of Yeezy x Gap, but Kanye has been waiting nearly a lifetime to get to this moment. In 2015, he voiced his aspiration to be “the Steve Jobs of Gap”. And if the round jacket looks like something that could have easily been released as part of Kanye’s proper Yeezy collection in the last few years, that’s likely the point. The endgame for Kanye has always been about lowering the price of his clothing and bringing it to as mass an audience as possible.

Source: GQ