After weeks of criticizing Gap, it looks like Kanye West’s partnership with the clothing company is over.
Lawyers for the irascible rapper formally notified Gap on Thursday that his Yeezy LLC is terminating a collaboration announced in 2020 to build a Yeezy Gap brand. The letter claimed Gap had breached the terms of their agreement by failing to open planned retail stores or release apparel, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fans will still be able to buy existing Yeezy Gap products from stores before the clothing company will have to stop using the brand name, according to the letter. Ye’s clothing made in collaboration with Balenciaga, which is also sold through Gap, won’t be affected.
ADVERTISEMENT
Relations between West and Gap have become increasingly frayed in recent weeks, with the rapper repeatedly expressing his frustrations with the company on social media.
“You have to really give me the position to be Ye and let me do what I’m thinking,” he said in one video addressed to Gap executives on Instagram last month, “Or I have to do the thinking somewhere else.” West also claimed the fashion label copied his designs or excluded him from the creative process.
Those executives might have been hopeful that West would be willing to look past his misgivings with the deal when he shared a more reflective post on social media last week in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death. The rapper wrote last Thursday that “life is precious” and vowed that he was “releasing all grudges today” while sharing images of the queen in her younger years.
He’s since deleted the post and it seems, as far as Gap is concerned, kept at least one grudge going.
News of the full-blown breakdown in relations between West and Gap will be nervously received at Adidas, which also has a similarly troubled collaboration deal with the rapper. He’s also accused the German sportswear brand of failing to fulfill contractual obligations and of stealing his ideas in recent months.
“It’s going to cost you billions to keep me. It’s going to cost you billions to let me go,” West said in another deleted Instagram post.
