Kanye West's trophy cabinet now has a fashion award. Last night, The Yeezy Boost 350, one of the shoes from his much sought after collaboration with Adidas, was named the Shoe of the Year at the 29th annual Footwear News achievement awards held in New York City.
In true Kanye fashion, his 20-minute long acceptance speech was filled with memorable quotes that touched on everything from his struggles in the fashion industry to his plans for the future.
West detailed how the idea for his brand came about during a trip to Japan with his close friend and collaborator Virgil Abloh.
"After the infamous Taylor Swift moment did a sort of self exile just to get away from paparazzi and have people not, you know, just fucking with me, really." Said West. "And the first thing I did was I went to Japan and it was me and Virgil Abloh, who has the brand Off White, and we just sat on a computer every day with this idea of designing. We designed on the computer so much we started to joke, 'hey, did you wash my jpg?'"
He also thanked Adidas for giving him the opportunity and resources to get his line off the ground.
". [Adidas] gave me the opportunity, especially this first run, to make 'em however I want to make 'em. They didn't say, "You got to make the logo four times bigger than the shoe.'""
However, he did mention that he had to shoulder a lot of the costs of producing the first season of Yeezy garments.
"I don't know how that was supposed to happen. And the original talent budget was $500,000 - I don't know how I was supposed to put a design team together for that, but luckily I'm a multi-millionaire rapper and I covered the rest of it.""
