“She was personally targeted and bullied. It is unacceptable.”
The fashion magazine Vogue has defended its fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson after Kanye West targeted her on Instagram.
Gabriella was among the attendees at Ye’s show during Paris Fashion Week in which models walked down the runway wearing clothes emblazoned with the slogan ‘White Lives Matter’. Right-wing commentator Candace Owens was also in attendance at the event.
Gabriella voiced criticism of the event, and described its theme as “offensive, violent and dangerous”.
She said: “The danger is that this very premise, the idea that white supremacy is in danger of extinction is what justifies mass incarceration, murder en masse, indeed even the advent of slavery. It didn’t land and it was deeply offensive, violent and dangerous.
“The T-shirts this man conceived, produced, and shared with the world are pure violence. There is no excuse, there is no art here…I do think if you asked Kanye, he’d say there was art, and revolution, and all of the things in that T-shirt. There isn’t.”
Kanye subsequently hit out at Karefa-Johnson in a tirade on social media. He specifically targeted her fashion choices and then deleted his posts.
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) October 4, 2022
Now, in a statement shared on Twitter, Vogue defended their global fashion editor.
“Vogue stands with Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, our global fashion editor at large and longtime contributor. She was personally targeted and bullied. It is unacceptable.”
They continued: “Now more than ever, voices like hers are needed and in a private meeting with Ye today she once again spoke her truth in a way she felt best, on her terms.”
Other major names in the fashion industry – Hailey Bieber, Gigi and Bell Hadid –have also rallied around Gabriella.
In a post on Instagram, Kanye West described Gabriella as his “sister” and claimed that they had a meeting which was filmed by Baz Luhrmann, and that they apologised to one another.
