Towards the latter half of 2017, a new truth dawned on the internet; or at least on the parts I frequent (Twitter and Reddit, i.e. the amalgamation of the of the internet as a whole): Kim Kardashian’s new sartorial aesthetic wasn’t simply influenced by Kanye West — as the media often reported her looks to be — she was a living, breathing and constantly photographed advertisement for Kanye West’s new clothing line, Yeezy Season 6.

Over the course of the year, she had been consistently photographed running mundane errands like going to McDonald’s, putting gas in her car, and walking down the street in the now-iconic aesthetic.

Kim Kardashian aesthetically exits a car, Los Angeles, November 2017

The photos were ostensibly paparazzi shots: They appeared on the regular tabloid websites, were discussed on social media and were retweeted by fans. They were also shared from Kim Kardashian’s own social media accounts which, if you’re the kind of person who pays attention to the Kardashian/Jenner Instagram accounts, isn’t a rare occurrence when a paparazzo snaps a flattering photo.

What those who don’t pay attention to these things probably don’t know is that these photos weren’t paparazzi shots; the harsh, direct lighting a little too perfect and the poses and environments a little too staged. They turned out to be styled by Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, and were an orchestrated showcase of head-to-toe Yeezy Season 6.

Hinging on West’s intimate understanding of his wife’s overwhelming fame, the photographs (as expected) were distributed, shared and dissected with such rabid vigor that the de facto signifier of Kim Kardashian West shifted, and she was quickly reinforced as platinum-haired, made-down and neutral toned — anomalous to the decade-long signifiers of dark hair, contoured makeup and ostentatious displays of wealth through fashion.

Even a cursory glance at Kim’s Instagram shows she hasn’t broken character.

Kimstagram, January 2018.

Only in January 2018 would we fully recognise how important it was for this aesthetic to become iconographic, akin to Tupac’s bandana, Britney’s school girl outfit or Kanye’s shutter sunglasses. The power of Yeezy Season 6 Part II depended on it.

Note: For the sake of clarity, I’m splitting the Yeezy Season 6 campaign into Part l (2017) and Part ll (2018).

Before getting into Part II of the campaign, it’s important to consider the pop-cultural context that allowed it to become a reality.

Both mainstream and counterculture media have expended massive amounts of time and energy on Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, both singularly and since they became a unit. While West has gained critical acclaim for many of his albums, his publicity stunts have constantly detracted from his artistry. As a unit, they’ve been pointed to as symbols of anti-intellectualism, materialism, narcissism and entitlement.

All of these things may be true, but whatever your personal thoughts on the Kardashian West Empire, it’s become impossible to dismiss them as an ‘egotistical rapper’ and a ‘former pornstar’. Unless you choose to remain purposefully ignorant of their collective influence on fame, fashion, social media, music and visual art, it’s important to take them seriously.

More so, it’s important to take their influence seriously in order to deconstruct how flawlessly they manipulated the public and the media to create an advertising campaign that transcended the medium to the extent that it became art.

Before moving onto Yeezy Season 6 Part II, a quick history lesson on why Yeezy Season 6 Part l had to happen the way it did:

West’s initial foray into fashion began in 2009, when he designed the Air Yeezy 1s and 2s in partnership with Nike. In true Kanye West style, once the partnership dissolved, he made a diss-track, encouraged a crowd at his Yeezy Season 3 show to chant “Fuck Nike”, and promptly aligned his loyalty to Adidas.

Despite his fashion education and appearance on the April 2014 cover of Vogue (alongside Kardashian), he was shut out of the fashion world — reminiscent of his early music career, where he was shut out of rapping and pigeonholed as a “chipmunk soul” producer.

In the subsequent years, he interned at Fendi, apprenticed at Giuseppi Zanotti and collaborated with Louis Vuitton. Despite all of this, he still wasn’t taken seriously as a designer.

In 2016, Yeezy Season 4 was gleefully reported to be a disaster by media outlets including Harper’s Bazaar, High Snobiety and CNN. Some models passed out and others took a seat on the runway, while desperate stagehands gave out water to the models who were still standing. One model’s shoes broke, another had to be helped down the runway and another simply kicked off her shoes and reappeared later in her own slides. What little attention the clothes themselves received was overwhelmingly negative.

By 2017, things started looking up in West’s fashion career — he was invited to show Yeezy Season 6 at Paris Fashion Week and it looked like he had finally cracked the fashion industry. Shortly after, Demna Gvasalia (he of high-priced normcore garments that include DHL T-shirts for R3 000 and Titanic hoodies at R16 000), pulled out of Paris Fashion Week and announced that Vetements would no longer participate in fashion shows, saying, “I got bored. I think it needs to enter a new chapter.” A few months later, West pulled Yeezy Season 6 from Paris Fashion Week.

After years spent fighting to get his foot in the door of the fashion industry, the door was open — but Kanye didn’t need them anymore.

Instead of on runways, Yeezy Season 6 was democratised to the public by appearing on Kim Kardashian. Now hypebeasts, fashion insiders, Kim Kardashian fans and even casual social media users had a front-row seat to the line’s debut. Using the most famous woman on the planet to showcase his new line was powerful in its stark simplicity (as almost all great art is). But he wasn’t done yet.

On 31 January 2018, a barrage of social media starlets, porn stars, models, celebrities and microinfluencers, including Paris Hilton, posted photographs of themselves dressed as Kim Kardashian with the hashtag #YeezySeason6.

If they weren’t already blonde they wore blonde wigs, and recreated the same scenarios as Kim Kardashian’s faux-paparazzi shoot: eating ice-cream at McDonald’s, exiting a sports car, walking down the street.

The months of groundwork spent reinforcing the new Kim Kardashian aesthetic paid off in a feat of marketing spectacular in its complete reliance on iconography. What makes it all the more spectacular is that this iconography had only become entrenched in the minds of the public within the preceding year, and the public alone was entrusted with disseminating the images of Kim Kardashian — and they did, so much so that her signifiers had become part of our collective unconscious.