Kanye West is being sued again. This time, he’s being sued for the unauthorized use of a picture that aimed to publicly shame Vogue’s global contributing editor-at-large, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, because of her comments on Instagram about his “White Lives Matter” t-shirt.
In October 2022, Yeezy debuted his WLM shirts at the Paris Fashion Week and received instant backlash. In her Instagram stories, Karefa-Johnson said West demonstrated “indefensible behavior,” adding the t-shirt is the equivalent of a “Duchampian” type of provocation.
“It didn’t land, and it was deeply offensive, violent and dangerous,” she wrote.
She later wrote her ideas about the shirt were evolving, but she was clear “the t-shirts this man conceived, produced, and shared with the world are pure violence.”
As a get-back, Kanye West posted on his Instagram page a picture of her, writing, “This is not a fashion person. You speak on Ye Ima speak on you Ask Trevor Noah.”
TMZ says Michaela Efford, the person who took the picture of Karefa-Johnson, is suing because he didn’t get permission from the photographer to post the flick. The lawsuit says simply Ye posted the picture a week after she took it.
Additionally, because West had millions of followers, it damaged Efford’s ability to profit off of her own work. West nor Karefa-Johnson has responded publicly to the lawsuit.