Virgil Abloh Thinks You Missed The Point Of Kanye West’s Sandals

Artist, fashion-enthusiast, and free-thinker Kanye West attended rapper 2Chainz's wedding at the Gianni Versace mansion in Miami on Saturday, where he and his wife gave attendees quite an eyeful: Kim Kardashian wore a neon highlighter green latex dress with a thigh-high split, while West wore a mint-colored Louis Vuitton suit designed by his good friend and one-time protégé Virgil Abloh. But it was what West was wearing south of his ankles that caused a stir on Twitter.

The rapper (who was also wearing two chains for the event) paired his Vuitton suit with gray Yeezy slides and light-colored socks. It didn’t take long for the couple — mostly Kanye — to become a meme. “Come to my wedding in slides and it will be you who is sliding home. Come to my wedding dressed like a highlighter and it will be you who is highlighting the easiest journey back to wherever you came from,” user @brokenpromisthes wrote on Twitter. Others, like @YouLoveMimxo, thought West’s slides looked like “he just pulled out the nursing home.”

But Abloh isn’t here for the naysayers. The artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men's says if you’re focusing on West’s sandals, you're missing the point. “That was the most important outfit of recent memory,” Abloh tells Refinery29, noting that the combination of the couple’s color palettes and all the attention the photo has gotten made him love fashion again. “It gave me hope after all the over-saturation of fashion where every two weeks there a new It shoe,” he explains. “The brand[s West was wearing were] everywhere, but there was no one identifiable brand.” So, Abloh likes that you didn’t readily know West wearing a Louis Vuitton suit or that the slides weren’t Adidas? Yes, apparently.

“He and I are fans of fashion, and are obviously self-taught,” he continues. “We both got to a place where we were able to make these things and make them in our image. And to me, that image is as important as all of the Black women on the September covers,” he adds, noting that while the uptick in diversity is obviously amazing, but shouldn’t be a novelty.” Further, Abloh notes that both pieces West wore were made by Black designers. “That’s crazy advanced,” he says. “I think when people focus on something as small as the sandal, they might lose the bigger picture. Our heads are down and we’re creating, we’ve been trailblazing since before.”