Kanye West Wants Anna Wintour-Like Influence
Katy Perry and Kayne West at The Daily Front Row Awards. Photo: Getty Images
Kanye West has earned a reputation for many things: his trailblazing music, his forays into fashion, Kim Kardashian, his Internet-breaking wife. He’s also known for going off on inexplicable tangents, like at Thursday night’s Daily Front Row’s inaugural Fashion Los Angeles Awards. West took to the stage at the Sunset Tower hotel to present Mazdack Rassi with the Fashion Innovator of the Year award. But before introducing the founder and creative director of Milk Studios, he seized the opportunity to riff on a few points tied in to the topic of fashion.
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“Since this is the very first presentation of the very first Fashion Los Angeles Awards, I’m going to take longer than all the other presenters,” West announced. “And this doesn’t mean that other people—I’m taking up all your time so everyone else is really short.” The rapper then went on to elaborate on numerous topics, including his perception of fashion’s ability to save the world. “I believe that the world can be changed, the world can be saved, through design, through unselfish design, through unselfish creation. God is the number one creator—I’m a Christian, I’m not trying to force my opinions on anyone—but in my opinion, God is the number one creator. And anytime we create were the extension of doing his work on Earth.”
As if that wasn’t enough, West went on to reference Anna Wintour's doppelganger in the Devil Wears Prada. On the Vogue editor’s unmatched influence on fashion, he said, “I always tell Anna [Wintour]… I want to be in the middle of that conversation. As we all know, The Devil Wears Prada was about Anna, I want to be in the middle of that conversation where she was talking about the blue sweater.” He was talking about, of course, was Priestly’s famous cerulean speech: ”You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.”
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In true form, West delivered his speech straight-faced, even explaining why he rarely cracks a smile in photos. Unlike his wife, who doesn’t smile as part of her wrinkle-prevention routine, he blames it on a 19th centure book he found in a Parisian flea market while working on his last album, Yeezus. “I looked at all these peoples photos in it and it looked so regal. And their outfits were incredible, and they weren’t smiling,” he said. The same goes for paintings in old castles, he said. “People are not smiling, ’cause it just wouldn’t look as cool.”
And with that, he walked off the stage and the audience broke out into a collective grin.
