It's official: Phoebe Philo is out at Céline. And while we have many thoughts about the breaking news (Where will she go next? Who will take her place?), we're mostly wondering: How is Kanye West taking the news? Because as any die-hard Yeezy — or Philo — stan knows, his love for the designer is well-documented.
In 2010, West first rapped his appreciation for Philo on the opening track of his critically-acclaimed album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In the song “Dark Fantasy," in which one Onika Maraj, or Nicki Minaj, retells Roald Dahl’s Cinderella, West, who has proven time and time again to know the power of a dress, shouted out Céline, saying: “And my bitch in that new Phoebe Philo.”
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Not content to let Amber Rose (who he was dating back when he recorded MBDTF) have all the fun wearing Philo’s designs, in 2011, West performed at Coachella in a silk blouse from Céline’s spring 2011 collection. (Instead of wearing the full look, 'Ye styled the top with jeans, thick chains, and wrists full of colorful bracelets.) In June of the same year, West presented the British designer with the International Award at the 2011 CFDA Fashion Awards. At the time, he said it wasn’t planned for him to fan out in such a big way for Philo: “It was funny, 'cause I said her name in the first song as I came up over the crowds wearing her shirt,” he said of his festival look.
In October 2011, he attended Céline’s spring 2012 show in Paris wearing a T-shirt, khakis, and a denim jacket — undoubtedly a reference to how West was spending his leisure time back then, studying the fashion industry and plotting his future path as a designer. He even credits Philo with ushering in a new era of fast-fashion, making us all “New Slaves.” In the now-infamous interview with BBC One’s Zane Lowe, West explained: “You can have on a Zara pant, right? And a girl walks in with the Céline version, and you feel like shit. That is the problem. I'm talkin' about us, the new slaves, the people who love fashion. I'm talking about us, you know? 'Cause I'm a slave to it. I love it. I love it!”
Now feels like an appropriate time to say we miss the old Kanye, “chop up the soul Kanye, set on his goals Kanye,” if only because if he had an active Twitter or blog, we’d already be in the midst of one epic rant about Philo’s effect on the industry. Because as West once said of her first Céline collection: "I was looking at a 12."