Aka Gosha – Style

Last week, Kanye West announced that Russian designer Gosha Rubchinsky will be the new head designer of his Yeezy brand. Against the backdrop of this news, we remember what Rubchinsky’s design path was like, and discuss why Kanye chose him and what Gosha’s future might be in a new place.

The Yeezy brand began in 2009 when Kanye West signed a contract with Nike to create a joint collection of sneakers. By 2013, this partnership ended and in 2015 Yeezy moved to Adidas. It was in collaborations with the German brand that West created his most popular items, such as the Yeezy Boost canvas sneakers, which remain popular to this day. In parallel with this, Kanye creates his own collections and develops his brand. In 2022, after a series of scandals and accusations of anti-Semitism associated with Kanye West, Aadidas (like many other brands) refused to cooperate with the rapper and stopped releasing Yeezy items on its platform.

The brand of the same name by Gosha Rubchinsky appeared in 2008. Then the Russian designer impressed everyone with his debut collection “Evil Empire” – this was an obvious reference to the words of Ronald Reagan, who called the USSR that way. At the center of the collection were the motifs of the decline of the Union and post-Soviet reality: tracksuits and the atmosphere of courtyard romance echoed raves, the cultural code of the late 2000s and the aesthetics of street fashion. By and large, Rubchinsky was one of the founders of the Russian Neo Camp style.

Russian Neo Camp is a style that literally captured the international fashion market in 2012–2014. Bald guys in tracksuits have become not just an echo of the CIS, but a kind of trend. Gosha Rubchinsky, Heron Preston and many others discovered a new Russian style – but not in the sense that we are accustomed to in jokes. Now hoodies and T-shirts with the Cyrillic alphabet have become identified with street fashion, skateboard culture and hip-hop. In 2018, Gosha Rubchinsky himself found himself at the center of a harassment scandal, which killed his own brand.

Many have already dubbed the union of Kanye and Rubchinsky as a duet of two “canceled” artists. After all, the last news we heard about both of them had less to do with fashion and more to do with scandals. However, we should not forget that both, despite their ambiguity in the media space, remain visionaries. Rubchinsky will undoubtedly breathe something new into Yeezy – it’s stupid to expect him to repeat West’s cripples. The legacy of Russian reality, multiplied by the geometric and deconstructed things of Kanye West, can give a really interesting result. Also, do not forget that almost everything that Rubchinsky and West touch instantly becomes a general trend, which all street fashion then tries to repeat.

Against the background of his new appointment, Rubchinsky also resurrected the brand of the same name. In addition to working on Yeezy collections, the designer will also present his own lines. Everyone has to decide for themselves how to treat Kanye West. Crazy genius or ordinary provocateur – it’s hard to give a definite answer. At the same time, it is impossible to deny that both West and Rubchinsky create a unique product that invariably remains a slice of time in pop culture. One can only guess what will come of their collaboration. But it will definitely be very loud and extremely popular.

Ilya Petruk