Juan Pablo II Longsleeve (White Lives Matter Longsleeve)

Worn in Looks 10 (Black) & 11 (White), the Juan Pablo II Longsleeve was the main talk of the Yeezy Season 9 Show, obviously because of the White Lives Matter on the back of the longsleeves, which was very much planned. Ye had Vanessa Beecrof explain his stance in an Instagram post with the caption: "Don't kill a poet" Ye cares about black lives. Ye's White Lives Matters is a comment on the status quo. Ye's Black Lives Matters is a comment on how society frames independent revolutionary actions into a limited space of grand narratives. When an artist like Ye challenges those framed spaces - in a dialectical way - he is persecuted. He puts the grand narratives at risk. Black Lives Matter is an example of a movement that oppressors tolerate, commercialize, and use to cleanse themselves from international and historical guilt. When Ye says that Black Lives Matter is a scam, he means that nothing really changed. Blood still covers sidewalks. Ye proves that if artists have an opinion in territories that are unknown and new, like any true revolutionary, they are assaulted. Ye is an artist, Ye cares about all lives, all people, and he is working against all oppression. Ye is an artist with independent power. Grand narratives created by politics and media will always be in conflict with the artist. The artist is ultimately above the grand narratives. When I see these conflicts happening over and over again! see the persecution of the artist who is trying to be at the avant-garde for all of us. Artists should not be judged for the form of their expression because they have a dialectic way of articulating meanings. On November 5, 1975 at Pasolini funeral Alberto Moravia cried: "The poet should be sacred. There aren't many poets. Maybe three are born in a century. We have lost this poet, he created civil poetry, he had the courage to tell the truth, he was a unique witness who tried to provoke beneficial reactions in the inert body of Italian society. He had an absolute lack of calculations and prudent compromises. He was different in that he was disinterested, uncorrupted. You don't kill a poet." Vanessa Beecroft" Ye's team would give out the longsleeves to the homeless in Los Angeles on 10/07/2022. Ye would return to this design in January of 2025 and release it on yeezy.com. Documented wear by Ye: • 10/03/2022 during and leaving the Yeezy Season 9 Show (Black) • 10/05/2022 at the Clique studios. Ye proposed a new artistic direction and format: a 20-minute countdown to address all the controversies (Black) • 10/07/2022 at North's Basketball game at the Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, California, after shaving his beard (White)

Colorways: Black, White