Yeezy Season 4 is the fourth collection in the Yeezy fashion line designed by Kanye West.

The 39-year old rapper turned "fashion" designer transported New York's fashion elite - along with a host of his A-list to Z-list friends - to Roosevelt Island on Wednesday September 7, 2016, forcing major magazine editors, bloggers, and street style stars to board chartered buses in Midtown Manhattan that would take them to the skinny sliver of land east of the city.

^[4] There, in Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park over an hour and a half past the scheduled starting time, Kanye West debuted his collection in a lengthy catwalk show.

^[7] Multiracial extras of different shapes and sizes wore nude bodysuits in the middle of the grass while models walked around the perimeter in Kanye's designs.

The live stream of the show began shortly after 3 p.m. ET with the view of a cloudy New York skyline and songs from The Life of Pablo, West's latest music album that he debuted at his last fashion show.

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The style of Yeezy Season 4 remains to be a modernist take on urban streetwear similar to his previous lines, particularly season 3.

The latest collection is characterized by form-fitting and oversized silhouettes, with pieces such as bodysuits, T-shirts, hoodies and parkas.

The latest collection also limits itself strictly to neutral colors as in the past, though where the newest season differs is in the distribution of the color palette.

Season 4 consists overwhelmingly of positively toned beige and flesh colors with the occasional black and blue colors, leading to a brighter mood set than in former seasons, whereas negatively toned neutral colors consisting mainly of green, blue and black colors ruled the runway at Yeezy Season 3 and contributed to a darker overall look.

While the clothes were designed by West himself, the performance was organized by long-time art collaborator and performance set artist Vanessa Beecroft ^[20], who has received criticism for her comments in a recent interview with New York Magazine where she essentially described how she sees herself as half-white and half-black ^[21] .

In a backstage interview with Vogue, Kanye expressed that he does not assign any social or political commentary to his fashion collections and fashion shows ("It's just a painting, just using clothing as a canvas of proportion and color.").

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New York Magazine confirmed this in their interview with Beecroft: "They are large-scale spectacles that make ideologically slippery use of bodies, race, and gender.

In West and Beecroft's hands, these potentially radioactive subjects are treated as simple aesthetic choices (in "Yeezy Season 2," the models are grouped by skin tone, reduced to something like Pantone chips), used as supple metaphors of personal struggle and spiritual yearning.

For the politically conscious, this is a complicated trick to pull off, but to hear Beecroft tell it, it's all just poetry."

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Indeed, others have speculated that the forced homogeneity of the clothes, racial composition of individual models, racial organization of the models as a collective group and the imprisoned and rigid atmosphere of the shows serve as a statement on class, race and gender relations in the United States.

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Due to the late start, models were forced to stand in the tight-fitting outfits for more than an hour, with some having to sit down and rest, while others actually passed out.

^{[-1] [2]}Several models fainted due to the heat, while others actually tripped up on the runway.

^[14] Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, and Kylie Jenner dressed in neutral, skin-baring outfits for the occasion, but arrived at the event late — which some people blamed for the show's late start.

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Reception

Representatives from the press who attended the event have expressed overwhelming concern about the cruel and hostile working conditions that the models were subjected to throughout the event.

According to media personnel who attended the event, models not only acted as unpaid labor for the event ^{[8] [12]}, but also suffered from dehydration and undernourishment resulting in fatigue, weakness and fainting spells ^[8].

These problems were attributed to a lack of adequate water and food intake prior to and during the event, resources many believe should have been sufficiently provided by Kanye and his team in light of the fact that the models were volunteering their time (including some who were personally invited to work the show) ^[8].

Stella Bugbee, editorial director for the New York Magazine's fashion and lifestyle section The Cut, documented these conditions on her Twitter as they happened ^[15], calling for her followers to boycott Kanye's fashion line ^[22]as Kanye's team refused to help incapacitated models up and instead waited for audience members to do so ^[17].

Media representatives apparently left mid-event due to these problematic issues.

In addition to the show's production inconsistencies, ranging from the delay in starting time to models sitting down and falling on the runway, critics have disparaged the lack of imagination and originality from this latest Yeezy collection.

^{[16] [23]}Largely negative sentiment about the new Yeezy season from both fashion professionals and consumers alike reveals that the Yeezy line still leaves much to be desired.

Because the new collection offers minimal novelty and overplays the same forced monotony from seasons past while outfits continue to demonstrate poor construction, wearability and aesthetic value ^[16], critics are further questioning the creativity, innovative ability, artistic talent and integrity of Kanye as a high fashion designer, much less a fashion designer in the loosest definition of the term.

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