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CNN Business
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Fashion giant Balenciaga has officially cut ties with Kanye West after the rapper made a series of anti-Semitic posts and other controversial comments, according to a statement from Balenciaga’s parent company cited by Women’s Wear Daily.
“Balenciaga no longer has any relationship with the artist and has no plans for any future projects,” Kering, Balenciaga’s parent company, said in a statement to WWD. Kering did not respond to CNN Business’ request for comment.
West, legally rebranded as Ye, teamed up with Balenciaga earlier this year on the wildly popular Yeezy Gap line. Gap first announced a 10-year deal with Ye for the Yeezy Gap brand in June 2020, but West said last month that he would end his partnership with Gap due to “serious breaches.”
Gap Brand President and CEO Mark Breitbard said in an internal company email that the decision was made to “end the partnership” because of their “unaligned vision.”
The New York Times reported that West and Balenciaga have always had a close relationship, and he and creative director Demna Gvasalia “texted several times a day.” But Gvaslia and Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit reportedly attended the ill-fated Paris fashion show, with West wearing one of his controversial line of “White Lives Matter” shirts.
Earlier this month, Ye’s Twitter and Instagram accounts were restricted for violating policies on posts containing anti-Semitic content.
In a now-deleted tweet, West said he was “going to the death hoax 3 [sic] About the Jews, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine records extracted by CNN.
Most recently, Yeh announced plans to acquire far-right social platform Parler to prevent “fear of being removed from social media again”.