Kanye West Went Into Debt to Fund Fashion Line

Kanye West Went Into Debt to Fund Fashion Line:

While Kanye West's Adidas collaboration is on the verge of availability nationwide, the rapper has revealed that his 2012 ready-to-wear women's collection, which he funded with his own money, plunged him into debt after a poor reception from fashion critics. "I gained because I had the privilege to be educated," West told the New York Times. "I had enough of a value to be able to go into debt, and that was a blessing. Some people don't even have the opportunity to be able to go into debt."

West's outspoken nature has crept up everywhere from his "Imma let you finish" moment to "George Bush doesn't care about black people" to his near-interruption of Beck's Album of the Year Grammy acceptance speech. "I'm not a celebrity, I'm an activist," West says. "The fact that when I see truth it's really hard for me to sit back and just allow it to happen in front of me on my clock makes me, a lot of times, a bad celebrity."

That brazen behavior has seeped into the fashion world: West recounts a story to the Times where he felt he was personally shunned by Saint Laurent designer Hedi Slimane. As (potential) revenge for the incident, West reveals that the cover art of an upcoming single might be a photograph of a Saint Laurent store in Chicago after an April 2014 robbery, with its front glass shattered. (The image can be seen in this Chicago news screenshot.)

The rapper also shared a metaphor that he feels best describes his insuppressible ego. "I have this table in my new house. They put this table in without asking. It was some weird nouveau riche marble table, and I hated it," West said. "But it was literally so heavy that it took a crane to move it. We would try to set up different things around it, but it never really worked. I realized that table was my ego. No matter what you put around it, under it, no matter who photographed it, the douchebaggery would always come through."

Original enclosures: