Kanye West Yeezy Gap Collab: Can It Save The Brand?

By the time Kanye’s first Yeezy Gap pop-up in Times Square opened at 10 a.m. on Thursday, a line of approximately 100 shoppers had already snaked around the corner of 45th Street and Broadway. Naturally, Yeezy fans, like Peter Signley, a 37-year-old man from Uptown Manhattan, were aptly dressed. Singley, who has collected Kanye West-designed apparel since buying his first pair of Yeezy Adidas sneakers in 2016, was in line since 4 a.m. He posted up in a pair of long rubber boots, an oversized Yeezy Gap T-shirt Engineered by Balenciaga, black mesh basketball shorts, and a hat designed by Demna for the release of West’s Donda album last year.

However, shopping for both Gap and Yeezy apparel is nothing new to him. Singley admits he was expecting “an army or mob scene” but ended up being one of the only fans in Times Square during those early Thursday morning hours, noting he had fun watching Gap put up a giant billboard advertising the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collection.

“I used to come out for the original Yeezy Season 1, 2, and 3 [Adidas] sneaker drops. It was always crazy with a line overnight. Usually there’d be wristbands or something but there was hardly anybody out here [last night],” says Singley, who also notes that Gap was one of the first labels he shopped from when he received his first paychecks as a teenager. “Gap jeans and graphic T-shirts were my go-to when I wanted to express myself when I was 13-16 years old because you could afford it at that age.”