Kanye West has announced that he will be terminating his company Yeezy’s partnership with Gap Inc. According to a statement by his lawyer, obtained by CNN, the decision comes after the retailer allegedly failed to meet specific requirements, including product distribution and opening dedicated Yeezy Gap brick-and-mortar locations.
An attorney for the artist, Nicholas Gravante, told CNBC, “Yeezy notified Gap of its concerns in August and gave the company a contractually designated 30 days to cure its breaches.” However, he claims Gap took no actions to abate the concerns.
“It was always a dream of mine to be at the Gap and to bring the best product possible,” West told the outlet on Thursday. “Obviously there’s always struggle and back-and-forth when you’re trying to build something new and integrate teams.” The Yeezy founder claimed he wasn’t able to set the prices on his products, and detailed occasions where he did not approve certain color selections. “A king can’t live in someone else’s castle,” he said. “A king has to make his own castle.”
According to the Business of Fashion, Gap Inc. issued a notification to employees though an internal email, detailing its plans to conclude the collaboration with Yeezy. Sent by president and chief executive of the Gap brand, Mark Breitbard, the email reads, “Simply put… while we share a vision of bringing high-quality, trend-forward, utilitarian design to all people through unique omni experiences with Yeezy Gap, how we work together to deliver this vision is not aligned.” The email continued, “And we are deciding to wind down the partnership.”
“We are truly grateful to our Yeezy Gap team members who have given so much to build this brand, and we will take the new, hyper-entrepreneurial ways of working we learned through this process with us as we move forward,” Breitbard wrote. “We will focus on our strategies to strengthen the brand and continually push the boundaries of what Gap can deliver.”
The deal was originally struck in 2020 and was meant to last 10 years. Recently, the Donda artist has taken to social media to express his frustration in his partnerships with both Gap and Adidas.
Earlier this summer, the highly anticipated Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collection was available to shop at a special pop-up inside Gap’s Times Square flagship, and later made headlines after clothes were being sold out of trash bags.
