It’s no secret that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West love a twinning couple moment. After all, nothing says “bae belongs to me” quite like swaddling yourself in a beloved piece of clothing stolen out of your S.O.’s wardrobe. And that’s precisely what Mrs. West did yesterday, arriving at LAX in a pair of Yeezy PVC booties and her husband’s controversial, graffiti-scrawled jean jacket.
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Kim’s airport look was pure 90s rock and ‘roll glam, pairing her husband’s jacket with a black choker, button-up tank, ripped skinny jeans, a Birkin, and of course the aforementioned Yeezy boots the rapper had custom-made for his betrothed. While the reality star looked effortless making her way out of town, especially considering her standard latex attire, the borrowed jacket in question is currently at the center of a bit of artistic controversy.
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As it turns out, West’s beat-up, scribbled on denim isn’t the product of a late night punk music-fueled DIY session, but rather the work of Australian designer Pauly Bonomelli who has created a number of custom one-off pieces for Kanye, as well as A$AP Rocky, featuring his signature heavily collaged, graffiti-inspired style.
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This particular piece is an homage to a real jacket worn by a homeless punk teenager named Tweeky Dave who was immortalized in the photography of Jim Goldberg and featured prominently in his 1995 book, Raised by Wolves. (Are you starting to see why this particular monograph may have caught Kanye’s eye?) The rapper’s jacket isn’t an exact replica, but it does pull a number of lines of text straight from Goldberg’s images of the drug-addled teen, and according to i-D the photographer is not happy about it.
Goldberg, who still owns Dave’s original design, told the magazine, “For the jacket to become sold as fashion — it really put me over the edge. The spirit and intention of Kanye could be right, but the manner in which he is presenting it is wrong. All meaning has been lost. [He’s] forgetting history — not acknowledging where that design came from is wrong.”
Kanye has yet to make an official statement regarding the piece of denim or his artistic appropriation, however, it’s kind of an amazing testament to the fashion influence of Ye that when he wears a jacket emblazoned with “Nazi tweeks rule” and “F— Off and Die” no one even bats an eye.
What do you think of Kim and Kanye’s jean jacket? Would you wear it?
–Emily Kirkpatrick
Follow @kirkpate
