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Kanye hired 1,200 extras to fulfill his Yeezy Season 3 Madison Square Garden vision, and Jezebel just published an anonymous account from one of those extras about her 12-hour Yeezy odyssey.
The story is presumably anonymous because many, many non-disclosure agreements were signed that day. That's the first thing the extra says she did after she waited on the street for 45 minutes in 19-degree weather to get into Yeezy Season 3 HQ. It just got weirder from there on:
And they don’t tell you anything. There’s no instructions. It’s just, "Line up in a single file. Here’s this NDA. Here’s a bag to put your cell phone in." And you’re just on a bus. You have no idea where you’re going until you’re going through the Lincoln Tunnel. I didn’t really understand why it had to be in Jersey. I had my cell phone up until we got to the warehouse. I was texting my friends a play-by-play, saying in case I go missing this is where I am.
When she got to the warehouse, all the extras moved assembly line-style through various areas to get dressed. There was a "leotard area."
Their clothing was not actually Yeezy brand clothing, the extra said.
I think a misconception was that the clothes the extras were wearing were from the Yeezy collection. All the shoes were Adidas, but the clothes were thrift store finds that I think they dyed to be the same color scheme.When I first got to the warehouse, I was like, how in the world did he produce all of these pieces. Then I realized they weren’t his label. The models that were wearing his designs were all on the platform, but they were also mixed in with some of the extras.
The extra started to wonder what this show was all about.
I think legally they can’t be like, only black models. That was never discussed. But I started to notice it as we were loading on the bus, and then I definitely realized it when we got to the warehouse. Like, there’s not one white person, even Asian, Hispanic.I remember texting my friend on the bus, like: "I honestly feel like Kanye’s about to make some political activist statement and if he has me up here dressed like a slave to make some sort of blactivist moment, I’m gonna be so pissed."
Those super strict instructions about not moving fast or acting cool came with a political theme, as fashion critics had suggested.
And it turns out, one of our instructions was that the theme was channeling a Rwandan refugee camp. We were Rwandan refugees. At this point, my mind was so blown. I was exhausted. I had been standing around for hours. I was honestly over it. I was like, I literally cannot believe Kanye has us out here dressed like refugees on this stage and we’re supposed to look sad and angry.
After standing in one place for an hour and a half during the show, the extras then had to wait for an hour to get their phones back and turn their clothes in.
Despite it all, and even though she says "There was a point where I was like, ‘Fuck Kanye for this," the extra interviewed by Jezebel still seems like a fan. "When I went back and watched the live stream, everything came together. His album is fire. His album is awesome."
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