GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson gets a thumbs-up from Kanye West. And so do sweatshirts. And the fashion world treats West like an “adopted child.”
Those were a few of the nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned from West’s wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair, which focused largely on his fashion endeavors but also on other topics.
TheWrap waded through the article, so you don’t have to. Read on for the highlights of West’s interview.
In the fashion world, he’s an adopted teenager.
“I think the entire fashion world at a certain point sort of looks at me and looks at my family as a child of theirs. Maybe not someone that completely grew up with them, but like an adopted child that came in, like a 17-year-old adoptee, you know [Laughs],” West said of his place in the fashion world. “But still nonetheless like an adopted child. And I think it’s just interesting for them to see growth, and they can completely tell the difference in the way things were presented in the very first Paris collections to what we’re saying now.”
Ben Carson — the presidential candidate who recently stated that he wouldn’t advocate for a Muslim president — is “brilliant.”
“As soon as I heard [Ben] Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him. I was like this is the most brilliant guy. And I think all the people running right now have something that each of the others needs,” West said. “But the idea of this separation and this gladiator battle takes away from the main focus that the world needs help and the world needs all the people in a position of power or influence to come together.”
And he still wants to run for president in 2020.
“Oh, definitely,” West said of his future political plans.
If he wins, President West won’t be giving up his creative endeavors.
“I have to stay creative. The whole point is to have someone [in office] that’s creative, that’s around amazing creatives. This is my theory: I think the world can be helped through design, so it’s very important that I stay around creative, forward thinkers. It’s very important that I continue to design, to be in practice of trying to make the best decisions possible,” West offered.
Despite mulling a career in politics, he hates politics.
“I hate politics. I’m not a politician at all,” West vowed. “I care about the truth and I just care about human beings. I just want everyone to win, that’s all I can say, and I think we can. . . “
Sweatshirts? Oh, yeah — totally essential.
“Sweatshirts are fucking important. That might sound like the funniest quote ever,” West opined. “How can you say all this stuff about running for president in 2020 and then say sweatshirts are important? But they are. Just mark my words. Mark my words like Mark Twain.”
He’s heading for serenity, one stroke at a time.
“It’s like if you’re swimming through the ocean for 10 years, 12 years, 13 years of your life, and now with this collection, I feel like I see sand,” West said of his current frame of mind. “I can see the beach. That’s just inspiring. At a certain point if you’re swimming so long and you just can’t see any return on the amount of work that you put into it, it makes you want to give up. It makes you want to question yourself, and I question myself all the time. I’ll see like the new Gucci collection or stuff or Vetements or Givenchy and I’ll be like, Man, what the fuck? This is so past anything …”