Adidas said on Tuesday that it is cutting ties with Kanye
West, ending what may have been the most significant corporate fashion
partnership of the rapper and designer’s career after he made a series of
antisemitic remarks and embraced a slogan associated with white supremacists
that earned him widespread condemnation.
Adidas, which began collaborating with Ye, as Mr. West is
now known, nearly a decade ago, after he left Nike, has long weathered public
barbs from the rapper. Its partnership with Yeezy, Ye’s company, which
encompasses sneakers and clothing, is estimated to be worth billions, making it
among the largest sources of Ye’s wealth.
For Adidas, working with Ye gave the company a boost of
creative cool and credibility that helped attract high-fashion collaborators
like Gucci and Balenciaga.
“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of
hate speech,” the company said in a statement. “Ye’s recent comments and
actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the
company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
The company, based in Germany, said it would terminate the
partnership immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop
payments to Ye and his companies. The move was expected to subtract up to 250
million euros ($246 million) from the company’s profit this year, it said.
Over the past month, Mr. West tested the boundaries of
acceptable behavior even for a noted provocateur like himself. At his YZYSZN9
Paris Fashion Week show, he wore a shirt with the slogan “White Lives Matter,”
which the Anti-Defamation League has identified as hate speech and that has
been adopted by the white supremacist movement. He made antisemitic remarks on
social media and in interviews shortly after, including posting on Twitter that
he would go “death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Blowback quickly followed.
Instagram and Twitter suspended Ye’s accounts. Ari Emanuel
of Endeavor, the parent company of the talent agency WME, called on
entertainment companies to stop working with Ye. Balenciaga, the fashion house
that had partnered with Ye in his Yeezy Gap project (which came to an end in
September) and opened its runway show in Paris this month with a modeling stint
by Ye, deleted him from its pictures and videos of the show. Similar images
disappeared from Vogue Runway, the platform of record for fashion shows, and
the magazine stated it “had no intention” of working with Ye in the future.
On Monday, CAA, the talent agency that represents Ye, said
it had dropped him as a client, while the studio MRC said it was shelving a
documentary on him.
Though Adidas was among the first of Yeezy’s corporate
partners to announce publicly — on Oct. 6 — that it had placed the relationship
under “review,” the fact that the company did not move faster to officially sever
the ties began to take a toll. The Anti-Defamation League shot back, “What more
do you need to review?”
The league stepped up its pressure on Adidas this week,
after members of a hate group hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the
Jews” over a Los Angeles freeway.
In Germany, the Central Council of Jews called on the
Bavarian-based sportswear giant to cut its ties to Ye. “The historical
responsibility of Adidas lays not only in the German roots of the company, but
also in its entanglement with the Nazi regime,” Josef Schuster, the head of the
council, said. “I simply expect such a company to take a strict position
regarding antisemitism”
The founder of Adidas, Adi Dassler, belonged to the Nazi
Party, and his factory was forced to produce munitions in the final years of
the war. It was only thanks to the sworn statement of a Jewish friend that he
was allowed to found the present-day company after World War II ended.
Antisemitic statements made online can lead to prosecution in Germany and companies
with ties to the Nazi era are expected to act to prevent the return of such
sentiment.
Shares of Adidas fell to their lowest point since 2016 in
trading on Tuesday, down more than 3 percent. The company’s stock has fallen
over 20 percent in the past month, as Ye embarked on his latest bout of
outrageous behavior.
The company said it expected the move to have a “short-term
negative impact of up to €250 million” on income for the year. Adidas makes the
uniforms for the German, Spanish and Argentine soccer teams that will be
playing in this year’s World Cup championship to be held this year in November
and December.
The end of Ye’s partnership with Adidas comes as his most
recent musical ventures have fallen short of previous efforts. His last album,
for instance, did not come out on streaming services, but a proprietary $200
speaker device. Longtime fans have criticized his increasing dalliances with
right-wing figures, including more frequent associations with Candace Owens and
Tucker Carlson and an agreement to buy the right-leaning social network Parler.
Ye has stated that he plans to open his own retail stores,
as part of his rejection of the corporate world and creation of what he has
reportedly called the “Yecosystem.”
But the future of the Yeezy brand is unclear. Ye still owns
the Yeezy trademark. However, Adidas said in its statement that it was the
“sole owner” of all design rights to existing products that came out of the
partnership, as well as previous and new colorways arising from the collaboration.
What the sneakerheads who made the last release of Adidas
Yeezy shoes, on Oct. 17, a sell-out product, will do next is now the question.