Kanye West calls for cultural revolution to end luxury branding
Kanye West has courted controversy by calling for a cultural revolution to end luxury branding and make designer goods available at lower prices.
The rapper was a guest lecturer at Oxford University in England on Monday (02Mar15), and during his address to students, he explained his ideas about class, consumerism and advertising.
West insisted advertising luxury products such as designer clothing
and expensive cars creates a divide in society between the wealthy
and the poor, and he insisted goods need to be repriced to redress
the balance.
According to Oxford.tab.co.uk, he told the audience, "In America
people really do wear $3,000 shirts. For real... We've been sold a
concept of joy through advertising, through car advertising,
through fashion branding. It's not the concept of time, time with
your family, time with your friends, the little time that we do
have on Earth and what we do with that. It was somehow sold to us
through a Gucci bag or something.
"Time is the only luxury. It's the only thing you can't get back...
It feels like people do everything in life to get this BMW, this
(Mercedes) Benz, to get this townhome... And when you're sitting in
traffic in your BMW, it's something that feels empty... It's
illegal to not wear clothes, and also possibly too cold... Clothing
should be like food. There should never be a $5,000 sweater. You
know what should cost $5,000? A car should be $5,000. And you know
who should work on the car? The people that work on the $500,000
cars. All the best talent in the world needs to work for the
people. And I am so... serious about this concept that I will stand
in front of anyone and fight for it... What good is anything that
everyone can't have. Every 'ism'. They think we're done with
racism. What about elitism, what about separatism, what about
classism?"
West, who is a budding fashion designer, has previously partnered
with luxury goods companies including Louis Vuitton and Giuseppe
Zanotti.