Kanye's Nostalgia

I ran across some info, as we often do wasting time on the internets, about Kanye West's new line Pastelle. In an interview with Marc Ecko, he discusses his love for throwback fashion, and how he connects to his grandfather's dress game. There are some other interesting excerpts which I plan on borrowing from (sigh...) Complex Magazine, and is featured below:

M: Do you think you’re nostalgic for that look, generationally? Was he more dapper?
K: Well, yeah, he was dapper—I don’t want to diss my dad’s style, but my dad would wear some JCPenney’s khakis and stuff. He wasn’t really into style like that. I remember one summer, when high-top fades was out, I was like 13 years old, and he told me, "OK, you can get your hair cut once a month." Which means that an Afro would start growing on the side of my head, so I had like a high-top fade and a high-top side.
M: [Laughs.]
K: And I remember I started crying, and he was like, "Yo, why you crying? I didn’t know your hair meant that much to you."

M: When you were growing up in Chicago in those early adolescent years, who’d you look to as an aesthetic role model?
K: Well, I always was really into clothes and stuff like that. And they used to have a store called Merry-Go-Round in the mall and it was that store I wanted to go to and just stare at stuff. It was all that In Living Color–era stuff with the baggy Hammer slacks and the—
M: You were rocking Hammer slacks?
K: Yeah, I actually wore some Hammer slacks.
M: See, I had you for polka dots…
K: Oh yeah, I had both. So, uh, not my finest moment. But, I wore that to school—and this is back in grammar school. It’s like people wore that in videos, but people would never actually really wear that in real life. And that’s when I figured out that I didn’t really dress how people dressed in "real life." I was like on TV before I was on TV.

M: When you visit family, do you dress more modestly?
K: People say you’re supposed to dress for the occasion. What I always say is dress like you’re coming from somewhere and you got someplace to go. You’ll probably be a little bit more yourself. That’s the attitude I had walking into Bassline studios in Italian shoes. I wasn’t dressing like I was supposed to stay in Bassline, you know what I’m sayin’?

M: Talk to me about your clothing line, Pastelle. We’ve had countless conversations about it, you’ve talked about your aspiration to get in this industry and be taken seriously. What’s going on with Pastelle today, why is it taking so long?
K: Just getting the right designs. It’s a gift and a curse. You’ve got all eyes on you, so if you deliver something great, it’s gonna get held as, "Oh, it’s supposed to be great." And even if it’s good or it’s OK or something, it’s gonna get bashed. There were phases where I could just do the bear on a Polo and it would’ve made $100 million. At a certain point. But I always say I was a designer before I was a rapper, and I really wanted to get into design. So then, trying to start designing and goin’ with my girl down to the fashion district and stuff, and looking at fabrics and stuff like that, I’m like, "Oh, shit. This is real." I’ve learned so much about materials and fabrics and applications and sequence and shiny fabrics and fits and all type of shit.

M: Our entire lives, white folks have copied black trends, from fashion to music. And now we’re in this moment where it seems like things have flipped, with black kids dressing like hipsters and bikers. What happened and where is it going?
K: Style just keeps changing, and that’s what it is right now. What is the true take on hipster? Why do hipsters like the most gangsterest of the gangster rap music? What is the reason behind that? I think it’s a little racist. But it’s equally as racist as why we like the movie White Chicks.

M: Right now, in this moment, it seems so about the aesthetic. Which is king, content or aesthetic?
K: Well, you focus on the music first. That’s one of the reasons why it took me fuckin’ four months to finish the lyrics on "Stronger," because the beat was just crazy and I hadn’t had people react to an instrumental like that since "Jesus Walks." So then it’s like, "OK, we got this song that’s incredible. How do we match up a visual that could be on the same level and have all the layers that the song had?" I love that challenge: How do you become fuckin’ Disney and Shrek and Anchorman, those things that across the board are commercially successful—you know what I’m sayin’.