There were several memorable moments at this evening’s return of Yeezy to Paris Fashion Week. North West’s performance at the finale was assured for any six-year-old. To have a member of the Yeezy team threaten to confiscate my camera’s SD card for taking photographs in a preview of the collection we were invited here to report upon (yeah, good luck with that) felt like cosplay North Korea: unholy too. Ultimately, however, this was a gathering about the star power of Kanye West, his Kim, their kin, and the universe they are shaping.

That universe is now centered in Cody, Wyoming, the Buffalo Bill–founded town around which West has circled his wagons, and where he holds his Sunday Service (a ceremony moved to Paris yesterday and attended by many, with some dissent after). Tonight’s event was held in Paris’s only Oscar Niemeyer–designed building, where a huge crowd hovered in the space, expectant. We were invited into a mirror-roofed dome scented with sage imported from Cody, and got to glimpse some clothes. They seemed related to previous Yeezy, but evolved: more organic, rougher, texturized. The neutral ochre palette remained, but some garments were raw; there was what looked like recycled leather and treated tufted wool in the asymmetrical bra tops and pants.

Kanye materialized, gold of tooth, and parlayed to a cluster of us who surrounded him as we do Miuccia Prada in Milan, thrusting our phones and straining to hear; the below is the best of what I reaped from Kanye’s sow.

West: “Like, if you take the rubber piece right there, there’s only one line on the hood, so it just keeps reworking and reworking to make that shape…it’s rubberized. I’ve always been obsessed with hazmat and that whole kind of vibe. So with this I see a couple of things where this is just the beginning of the language now.”

Questioner asks an indistinct question.

West: “A lot of times when my washes feel very rough and it feels very unfinished, I just think about [renowned art dealer] Axel [Vervoordt]. He doesn’t use a bunch of leather and shiny marble. We’re both very wabi-sabi and zen.”

Questioner, gesturing at the woolen garments nearby: “Is the wool from your sheep at your ranch?”

West: “It will be! This is experimental.”