Kanye West launches Yeezy with Adidas at New York Fashion Week

Why it matters

February 12, 2015. At Skylight Clarkson Square in Manhattan, during New York Fashion Week, Kanye West presented the Yeezy Season 1 collection. The collection included the Yeezy Boost 350 sneaker, the shoe that would become the most influential signature footwear in hip-hop since the Run-DMC Adidas Superstar in 1986. The Yeezy line, which Kanye had been negotiating for years (originally with Nike and then with Adidas after the Nike deal collapsed), became one of the highest-grossing sneaker-and-apparel lines in the world. By 2019 Yeezy was generating approximately $1.7 billion in annual revenue for Adidas. The Boost 350 specifically would resell on the secondary market for many multiples of its original retail price for years. Kanye himself would, by 2020, be reported by Forbes as a billionaire largely on the basis of the Yeezy partnership. The partnership ended in October 2022 after Kanye's antisemitic and white-nationalist public statements made Adidas's position commercially untenable. The seven-year run is the run. You can argue the Yeezy line was the most consequential rap-and-fashion business of the decade. Almost certainly it was.