Kanye West Drops Long-Awaited Yeezy Gap Collection, Round Jacket Preorder

The wait is over. In the wee hours of the morning (3 a.m. ET to be exact), Kanye West decided to celebrate his 44th birthday by finally giving his fans the chance to cop from his highly-anticipated Yeezy Gap line. The surprise drop comes almost one year to the date that the project was announced back in 2020. But its debut isn’t exactly how we expected though. Rather than a full line complete with a rainbow of “perfect hoodies,” T-shirts, and totes, Yeezy Gap dropped off an appetizer of sorts, a singular blue jacket. 

Gap and Kanye opted to shock drop the first item from Yeezy Gap today when most people were sleeping. An image of the zipperless blue jacket projected onto various buildings alongside a QR code and the Yeezy Gap logo in specific areas of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Fonzworth Bentley even shared an image of one of the projections on Instgram. The rollout might be familiar to longtime Kanye fans. He used a similar tactic in the lead up to the release of Yeezus in May 2013 when a video clip of his face rapping along to “New Slaves” randomly began playing on buildings in major cities around the world. Along with the floating projections, it also appears Yeezy Gape has hijacked the official Gap Instagram account for the time being. It currently only shows one post, a looping video of the Round Jacket, and has the “YZY” logo as its profile photo.

The recycled nylon jacket that is the focus of West’s latest attention commanding marketing is identical to the one that he was recently photographed wearing in the streets of LA a few days ago. Some people may have picked up on the new item at the time (West frequently teases his new Adidas Yeezy models and colorways in similar fashion simply by wearing them in public and letting the paparazzi do the rest), while others were fixated on the rapper’s recent habit of wearing full face coverings bearing religious motifs or the Nike Vandals on his feet. But I guess technically, he warned us this was coming. The blue Round Jacket is currently a US exclusive and only available for preorder via gap.com. It retails for $200 and will ship in Fall 2021. There is still no official indication of when the full product line will start to trickle its way into Gap stores nationwide despite the various rumors that have been circulating in recent weeks that have made it seem like the full drop is imminent. I guess we’ll just have to keep patiently waiting for those hoodies in the meantime.