The Best Style Quotes From Kanye West's SHOWstudio 'In Camera' Interview

Karizza Sanchez
Updated
Here are all the best style quotes from Kanye West's SHOWstudio interview.

Fresh from Paris Fashion Week, his Yeezy Season 2 presentation, and an 808s & Heartbreak show, Kanye West is participating in SHOWstudio's "In Camera" live interview series. The series has previously featured Lady Gaga, photographer Juergen Teller (who West has worked with before), graphic designer and Raf Simons collaborator Peter Saville, Nick Knight, and more.

Prior to this morning's airing, celebrities and friends and fans of West submitted questions—even including Nick Knight and Anna Wintour. West is dropping some gems right now about his position in fashion. We'll be recapping them right here.

On being and calling himself a creative genius:
"When people try to take the piss out of me for clothing, they never think about the fact I never had the opportunity to be properly educated. And if given the opportunity to be properly educated or given the proper support group, I would completely light the lights out. We sell shoes that people want to line up for because we put love in them. We put heart in them, we want to make Christmas presents. We make something people want so bad it hurts them if they can't have it. It's not just a financial opportunity—of course you need finances—but it's a form of discrimination and racism especially with blacks in fashion. It literally... It took me being Kanye West to get this far in fashion. I was able to become a multimillionaire and invest in myself because no one else would have in a million years."

On being criticized in fashion and how that affects him:
"I'm convinced that I know what I like. I just know. I know and I don't care. I don't care because anyone that's criticizing mostly likely saw the 350s and acted like they didn't like them because they're racist and discriminatory. They're not only racist against black people, they discriminate against celebrities, people with multiple art forms. They discriminate against... Or they can say, 'Oh wait a second that cut wasn't that good.' But they do enough to throw a stab at all that. 'That didn't fall the right way or that wasn't styled the right way.' But they didn't do the research on how difficult it was to, one by one, put together a design team and fight against the idea of celebrity, to get overcharged because you're a musician or people feel like you have money. And I love it because it's like going to Harvard. That's the reason I'm in fashion. I think it's the ultimate training.

"I dropped out of art school—eventually I got a PhD at The Art Institute of Chicago—but I dropped out of that school and wanted to go back to the school of hardknocks. And right now, I feel that... Whatever the fuck I'm gonna say to them I'm gonna say it, and I'm just going to fucking own it. That's how I feel right now. If I feel differently in three years, I'll tell you how I feel. But right now, the highest art form is actually fashion. And what's funny about that is people in art look down on fashion designers. The most energy currently is around fashion because in music it's within question if a song is popular if that person is a really good artist or not. In fashion, if someone is popular it's because it's agreed upon that they're an amazing artist, they're amazing at what they've done. And people do the history on what their background is. Did they intern for Christian Lacroix? Did they work at Margiela for a period? They find out what the history is and see if that person is making a connection to something that is current, is relative, that's in touch. Fashion designers are superstars currently, too.

"It feels like hip-hop felt to me in the '90s. Me, I'm a hip-hop artist but 'Why are you going to the fashion world?' I mean, it's just a really interesting art form. It's just a different art form. Every... Business is art, the way you talk to people is art, and interview can be a form of art. Everything is art. I appreciate the critics because when I see the collection I just did... When I use the stretch French Terry I found in Japan and I use heavyweight canvas and I put it in my color palette and I see 64 different tones come down together I've created a moving expressionist painting, and that satisfies me. If someone wants to go up to a Monet and this wasn't on a Louis Vuitton level, I'm like, 'What do you mean? It's all an expressionist painting.' By the way, you know in 80, 60, or 50 years we'll die. We'll die, but on that day I lived."

On whether or not he was trying to make a political statement with Yeezy Season 2:
"I think it's racist when white people assume that when a black person uses color it's a political statement. [I wasn't making a political statement.] It was a painting, it was a beautiful color. People say this a political statement... That statement is not gonna stop the murders in Chicago. That statement is not gonna help people get jobs. That statement is not gonna get guns out of hands in Atlanta. That statement is not gonna stop Zimmerman from bragging about... It's such a thing... I had this one stylist come up to me, and Virgil was standing next to me, and said, 'You need to watch out for him. He's taking your place.' And I was like, 'Oh the one spot for the black guy at the dinner table in fashion? That place? Is that what you're talkin' about?' The assumption that my artistic expression of clothing has something to do with race or politics and more politically correct term ironically for racism is racist in itself. If it wasn't my intention for it to be political, and everyone gives it this credit and somehow they're giving it a credibility I'm like, 'No I don't even want that kind of credit.' I don't want anything I don't deserve. I just want a chance to drink at the clear fountain. I just want a clean shot, I just want a clean bat to swing at the wall—and it's not."

On whether or not it'd be easier to be a fashion designer if he weren't famous:
"Yeah. People remind me in every meeting how famous I am. No, it wouldn't be easier. Absolutely, no. You need fame to sell your shit, that's why people pay for advertisers. I'm basically the first of a celebrity that approached his entire career and life like he was an old bag brand that went and redid itself and got a really cool designer that Anna Wintour suggested to revitalize it and became a really big brand. Meaning like celebrities always had a way of that they were supposed to do business with licensing deals, but I always approach it myself a luxury way whether it's calling Nick Knight a million times to work with him, going to factories in Italy... I've always fought to have better paints to work with.

"When I was in high school, I was on this one national competition where I had done a lot of water color. I lost the competition because the judges were confused. They said it was either not really water color 'cause the paint was too thick or I wasn't using water color in the right way. I lost because of that. I don't know where those judges are today, but..."

On how fatherhood has changed who he is and how he works:
"Three years ago, after this interview, I would've been on a train back to Paris to see the last of the shows and get that inspiration. Now, I'm on the first flight back to see my greatest inspiration, and that's my daughter."

On whether or not he thinks he'll be regarded as one of the greatest in fashion:
"Of course. I'm Michaelangelo. Of course. There was a time when there were people sculpting better than him. But he made David. So as far as that question goes, is there a time when he can go on the internet and find a shoe people want more than my shoes? Well, go fuck yourself then if it isn't, and don't ask me stupid shit like that again."

On affordable fashion and why Yeezy Season is more expensive than expected:
"I'm not H&M. I don't have giant factories. How can I get the price point to where I need it to be if I'm bringing an eight-person design team...

"It's gonna to take time to get there. This is what I'm sayin' when you don't have the right tools... This is the question that everybody asks. It's like, if you had the Céline design team, the Nike design studio, and the Zara factory could you do everything that you thought you could do? What would everyone's answer be to that? Yes. But if you don't have that Céline outerwear person, that factory, and you don't have the entire adidas studio—let me be politically correct—and you don't have the marketing team and you don't have the sales team you can only do what you can do. We're doing a lot with what we have. What we have is the highest level of communication that has ever happened in human existence."

On what's missing in fashion that he can bring:
"I'm not even concerned about bringing something to fashion. I just want to be five years old. When I was five years old, I picked out my outfit for kindergarten. I would go to a discount furrier—my mom would bring me to a furrier—and I would keep grabbing furs and say, 'What about this, mom? What about this one?' and they would always be too expensive, the ones I liked when I was five. So I just wanna be five years old. I loved clothes before I knew a fuck about the fashion world. And I can't let the fashion world jade anything or try to give me a reason of purpose or lack of purpose, or acceptance or a lack of acceptance, or anything to just who I am when I was five."

More from Complex