West fails to mention origins of jacket sold at pop-up shop.
Kanye West has come under scrutiny this week after it was revealed the design of a denim jacket sold at his recent pop-up shop in Manhattan first came from a dead homeless youth known as Tweaky Dave.
Jim Goldberg, a photographer who first captured the original jacket and its owner in his 1995 book Raised by Wolves, has expressed his frustration at the perceived exploitation of a kid who had turned to drugs and sex to survive.
“For the jacket to become sold as fashion—it really put me over the edge,” Goldberg told i-D magazine earlier this week.
Back in early 2016, Kanye wore a jacket designed by Pauly Bonomelli and inspired by Dave’s original. The designer shared a preview of the jacket on Instagram with the caption “RIP Dave”.
At the pop-up shop, a similar denim jacket was on sale for $400 covered in the now infamous The Life of Pablo sessions signatures. This new jacket bore resemblances to Bonomelli’s design, and in turn to Dave’s original. By this point, no mention of Dave or Goldberg were ever made publicly by West or others.
“The spirit and intention of Kanye could be right, but the manner in which he is presenting it is wrong,” Goldberg continued. “All meaning has been lost. [He’s] forgetting history—not acknowledging where that design came from is wrong.”
Goldberg still owns Dave’s original jacket and is asking for a simple acknowledgement of Dave and perhaps a contribution to homeless youth.
