On the eve of the simultaneous release of The Life of Pablo and his Yeezy Season 3 collection, Kanye West gathered his disciples in a parking garage in downtown Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood last night for a party celebrating the release of a zine showcasing his second ready-to-wear line, some five months after the collection’s original release on the Spring 2016 runways. Naturally, there was a full buffet and bar (in a parking garage), tons of models wearing very little, and a fur-clad Kim K on hand, but not one physical copy of the zine in question.
The lack of copies aside, the last-minute soirée—touted initially by Kanye on Twitter earlier in the day—was not as random as it might have seemed to some. Last March, Kanye released Season, a giant lookbook zine for Yeezy season 1, his first Adidas originals collaboration. The images were shot by Jackie Nickerson, a photographer who is perhaps best known for her TIME-covering portraits of Ebola doctors, but who began as a fashion photographer. Definitely more of an art piece than a lookbook, the zine was filled with nude, tattooed bodies stretched into athletic poses, distressed sweaters, and atmospheric industrial shots. Although they were once free at select stores and galleries around the globe, issues of the zine now go for about $150 on eBay.
For Yeezy Season 2, Ye designed the the athletic-leaning looks independently, and only collaborated with Adidas on the shoes. The result was a series of sand-colored utilitarian garb for men, and skin-tight, transparent sets for women (knockoffs of both are definitely available at American Apparel). Again, Nickerson’s accompanying photos suggested a desert aesthetic, with models posing against wind-brushed red rocks or naked atop motorcycles and horses in an arid location. Like the first issue, the Yeezy Season 2 zine is much more of an art piece than a catalog.
In the same sense, the zine release was more of a gallery showing than a traditional release party. Nickerson’s photos were blown up to gigantic proportions and back-lit in a mode that made already pristine, nude bodies glow even brighter. Then I realized that those bodies were physically in front of me, wearing slightly more than in the photos, posing in front of crisp representations of themselves, likely thanking Yeezus for the giant heat lamps that were brought in. When I first saw pictures of the collection’s completely transparent jumpsuits—besides wondering, "To what occasion does one wear a completely nude jumpsuit?"—I questioned the politics behind a man designing an outfit for a woman that puts her body completely on display. But the models whose exposed nipples and thongs were on display looked extremely empowered, dancing seemingly without concern, leaving us to confront the power of our own gaze. In a weird way, Yeezy’s minimal and nude-colored basics offer the chance to be empowered in one’s own skin.
Of course, maybe none of the other attendees were thinking about it this critically. For the most part, people just seemed obsessed with documenting that they were there or commenting on how there were so many "randos" outside. At one point, the dude in front of me in line groaned and remarked, "I have no idea how someone who is not associated with this would know about it." I would hear many similarly snooty comments like this throughout the night, which is why it was so exciting to talk to the big Kanye fans who beat the system and snuck in. Unfortunately, it seemed like they didn’t let in anyone from the line of fans, which assembled around 7 p.m. and quickly snaked around the block.
And so we waited. There must have been at least 250 of us who made it in, and no one seemed to have any idea what we were really doing at this freezing Manhattan parking garage on a school night. Finally, around 10 p.m., Kim and Kanye strolled in with little fanfare, both of them draped in magnificent coats: Kim’s was cow-print fur, Kanye’s was a denim jacket covered in Sharpie-d sentiments like "Nazi tweeks rule," "Hollywood dope friends 4 ever fuck u," and "fuck the system up the ass." Ye’s jacket, it turns out, is a replica of "Dave’s Jacket," a piece of found art from photographer Jim Goldberg’s series "Raised By Wolves."
As Kim and Kanye began to explore the exhibit arm-in-arm, the DJ abruptly switched to classic Ye tracks. Kanye looked happy to see people posing in front of his commissioned photos of naked bodies, and he snapped a few shots himself. Meanwhile, Kim chatted with the models and took some selfies. By the end of their walkthrough, Kanye had a plate from the buffet and urged everyone to "go party," chicken wing in hand. After less than 10 minutes and countless photos snapped, Kim and Kanye left. Kanye’s "Monster" verse hadn’t even kicked in. It didn’t matter—that they bounced, that nary a zine was to be found. People were there to see American royalty up close. Everyone basked in that feeling, and at midnight, security kicked us out.
The best part: Kanye had a huge smile—you know, the Kanye smile that emits pure joy and goodness—on his face the entire time. I think his smile broke me.