Kanye West Launches Talent Incubator to Help Emerging Designers

Kanye West hopes to help supporting artists on the rise with a new incubator program. The program will provide support, through financial assistance, as well as guidance, through mentorship, to budding talent in the area of fashion and design.

The incubator has already chosen its first beneficiary of the grant: Chicago-born, Parsons graduate Maisie Schloss - who was one part of the Yeezy womenswear design team.“Yeezy is a really special environment for growing and developing a career. When I started I was just an assistant, but the highly creative and unconventional atmosphere allowed for me to have visibility and input in a wide variety of projects,” Schloss told Vogue.

“Kanye very generously offered to support me; he truly cares about sharing resources, creating opportunities for creatives to grow and be recognised,” she continued. Schloss will debut the collection for her brand, Masie Wilen, in Los Angeles, and then later in Paris. The capsule will include 85 pieces, ranging from $100 to $950. “My first collection is inspired by rhythmic gymnastics and robotics, specifically studying how elegant fluidity emerges from rigid systems. Strongly driven by print, the clothes themselves are playful and fashion-forward but rooted in very wearable shapes,” she detailed, in her interview with Vogue.

Most recently, Kanye appeared in David Letterman’s Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. Their discussion touched upon Kanye's experience with being bipolar, with Ye explaining: "If you don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state, you have a potential to ramp up and it can take you to a point where you can even end up in the hospital," Kanye explained, according to Entertainment Tonight. "And you start acting erratic, as TMZ would put it."