Yeezy Gap Presents a Total Shopping Takeover in Times Square

At 10 a.m. on July 21–that’s tomorrow, people!—the Gap store in Times Square will become the first physical retailer to ever carry Yeezy Gap product. And in Ye fashion, the entire store has been redesigned to fit his unique vision. 

Gone are the mainstream displays and checkout registers, and in their place are dark gray furnishings and projection screens that allow customers to swipe through the Yeezy Gap offering. The clothes, rather than displayed on hangers or mannequins, are instead heaped into mounds. Doves, a signature of the musician of late, are projected onto walls. The entire rebuild of the store will take place in under 24 hours. 

If that seems like an enormous feat, consider the bigger one: The last time Ye (then Kanye West) introduced a new retail concept in New York City he reset the shopping paradigm completely. His 2016 The Life of Pablo pop-up shops, featuring new product made with Cali Thornhill DeWitt, launched the trend for high-end musician merch, spawning dozens of imitation pop-ups and collaborations for years to come. (Just try to imagine a time before there were stores where you could buy concert merch for a show you didn’t actually attend.) 

Now with The Gap, Ye is rewriting what is possible when one of the world’s most genre-defying artists forges a more meaningful relationship in fashion. The Gap store takeover is surely just phase one—one that is all but guaranteed to come with long lines and generate steep resale prices. Though as one guest at a TLOP concert sagely told Vogue back in 2016: “I’m not selling whatever I buy—it’s art!”