Kanye West ended his deal with Gap on Thursday (September 15).
Gap’s CEO Mark Breitbard confirmed the split in a memo to employees. The partnership crumbled after Kanye West publicly feuded with the company.
Kanye West spoke about his Gap exit in an interview with CNBC. He reflected on his initial goals for the collaboration before criticizing the company.
“It was always a dream of mine to be at the Gap and to bring the best product possible to the masses,” he told CNBC. “And I always talked to them about doing products for $20. Like the best product in the world, designed at the same level as the top fashion houses in the world, at $20 for the people. And so, we went through three years and honestly, there’s always struggles and back-and-forth when you’re trying to build something new and integrate teams.”
He continued, “We designed an entire collection. Actually, I wasn’t able to set the actual price that I wanted for this collection. And then they actually took one of the shirts and sold it for $19 … [Gap] priced my stuff at like $200 and above their whole price point normally. And then did the exact shirt for $20. Also, they did pop-ups and I signed on with them because they had—in the contract, they said they were going to do stores and they just ignored us about building stores.”
Kanye West accused Gap of breach of contract. He believed the company’s executives disregarded him.
“It was very frustrating,” he said. “It was very disheartening because I just put everything I had [into it]. I put all of my top relationships [into it]. I went and got Demna, the head designer of Balenciaga, which is one of the hottest brands in the world … With that relationship, he ended up working on a Gap collection with me. There were a lot of things: colorways I didn’t approve. There’s a lot of places that the product went to, certain sites, it was like they were just dog and ponying the ideas around town.”
‘Ye added, “Sometimes I would talk to the guys, the leaders, and it would just be like I was on mute or something. Our agenda, it wasn’t aligned.”
Watch Kanye West’s appearance on CNBC below.