Ever since the pink polos and backpacks, Kanye West has influenced a whole generation of people with not only his music but his singular style. His albums mark shifts in the cultural zeitgeist and serve as milestones of the year they arrive. While he always curated a signature look to accompany each album, it wouldn’t be until Watch The Throne that he reached the height of his style.
(Image via Complex)
Fashion always goes through cycles, and ten years ago, the prevailing trends couldn’t be further from what they are now. Silhouettes were way slimmer, tailoring was more apparent, sneakers were few and far between, and the oxford cloth button down was the white tee. Just look through this gallery of 160+ street style photos from New York Fashion Week; it was the pinnacle of the #menswear moment.
I asked SoleSavy member Matt F. what he remembers wearing in 2011:
“It’s definitely a lot different than what I wear now. I loved number (n)ine skinny jeans. I’d often wear flannels and oxford button-ups from Uniqlo or J Crew and wear a Wings+Horns or DRKSHDW zip-up sweatshirt on top of that. And for shoes, I think I mostly wore Vans Authentics back then. ”
Enter Kanye West.
The Watch The Throne uniform couldn’t be more of a contrast with what was happening in mainstream fashion back then. Even compared to what other hip-hop artists and what streetwear was at the time, Kanye was already in his own lane leading up to Watch the Throne.
(Image via E!)
“I mean, Watch The Throne was entirely dominated by Riccardo Tisci. The Don C Python Hat, black leather pants, it was the Givenchy show,” says @Slow, another one of our members.
Tisci was the lead designer at Givenchy at the time. Not only did he design the album artwork for Watch The Throne, but he was also responsible for a lot of the things that Kanye and Jay-Z were wearing during that run. In 2021, most if not all high-fashion brands have a slew of graphic and streetwear-inspired t-shirts, but back in 2011, you’d be hard-pressed to find them. Except, West wore a plethora of Givenchy graphic tees – most notably the Rottweiler and the custom tee in the “N****s in Paris” music video.
(Image via people.com)
Another mainstay is the leather bottoms that were also seen in the music video. Leather pants started to become a significant part of his wardrobe in 2011, and it reached its peak with Watch The Throne when he layered a leather kilt on top of his usual leather pants. The pants already required a gargantuan amount of confidence to pull off, but the kilt? He was just on another planet.
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen at least five photos of West wearing the kilt. It was one of 2011’s most hotly contested styling moves. But if there was anyone who was going to do it, it was West himself.
(Image via GQ)
Although, it wasn’t the first time West had dabbled into gender-bending clothing. Earlier in the year, West wore a womens’ silk shirt from Celine during a Coachella performance. A look that would go on to be on every menswear and style blog for a long time. In hindsight, the kilt didn’t come as a surprise.
Ten years removed from Watch The Throne, it’s hard to deny its influence, and on the style front, it ended up being a precursor for a lot of things to come. It set the stage for hip-hop’s eventual relationship with high fashion, luxury brands getting into graphic-heavy streetwear-inspired phases, broke boundaries for gender in menswear and womenswear, and of course, a LOT of leather pants.
(Image via MTV)
With contemporaries like Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo stepping into their successful labels, Ye’s imprints are hard to miss. You can argue for or against the music that Ye has put out since Watch The Throne, but there’s no disputing the impact he’s had in fashion over the last ten-plus years.
Read more about how Kanye West dominated the 2010s here.