In an official release that was shared with WWD, Kering has announced the official termination of Balenciaga’s partnership with Ye. In the exclusive statement for WWD, Kering stated that, “Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist.” 

Rumors of the termination came on October 20th, as Balenciaga had removed all images of Ye walking for their SS23 show from Vogue Runway. Later in the day, Balenciaga had removed all traces of their “Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga’ collection from all online retailers. 

The rapper and designer had a storm of controversy following his YEEZY Season 9 show in Paris at the end of Fashion Week, where he showed a shirt with “White Lives Matter” emblazoned on the back of t-shirts. The presentation caused an uproar on social media, in the age-old controversy of “can you separate the art from the artist?” The designer attempted to offer some sort of explanation on the shirts on Fox News — yet any attempt to clear his name was nullified by his use of Instagram to bully fashion editors who shared any opinions that were not aligned with his own, which led to Ye being restricted from using the social media platform.

The nail in the coffin for Ye came after a rampage on Twitter of anti-semitic tweets that included horrific threats — the tweets were quickly removed by Twitter. This past month of news surrounding the infamous rapper is massively upsetting, yet all the while unsurprising. Ye has had a falling out with his deals with Adidas and GAP due to his behavior, and his last fashion pillar of Balenciaga has finally fallen.