Kanye West
Kanye West certainly isn't the first musician to launch a line of high-fashion women's clothes. Victoria Beckham has made the leap too. But when Kanye unveiled his clothing line on Oct. 1 at Paris Fashion Week, he made history, becoming the first male musician to break into women's couture. It's certainly not a left-field vanity project; Kanye has been interested in fashion for some time. He has reportedly worked with Fendi and Louis Vuitton and has spoken of his admiration for designers Riccardo Tisci and Raf Simons. On the stage, Kanye regularly wears designer labels, including a women's shirt from Phoebe Philo's Celine label during a concert this year. There is no doubt that Kanye's clothing line will make a splash: the rapper collaborated with British designer Katie Eary on his debut collection and spent $22,000 on fabric and zippers just days before his runway show. But when the dust settled from the show, the verdicts were mixed. Singer Ciara told MTV, "It was monumental. It was a historic moment." But Christina Binkley from the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Runway wrote of Kanye's attempt to replicate Hervé Lé ger's famous Band-Aid dress that "the only thing more painful than witnessing the dress was watching the model pitch down the runway in shoes so ill-fitting that her spike heels were bending at angles."