We typically don't see much of Kendrick Lamar; the reclusive rapper prefers to keep his private life, well, private. That all changed over the past few weeks, with hype building from his finsta reveal capped by Kendrick's unbelievably powerful appearance at Chanel's Couture Week fashion show.
On July 4, the hottest day ever recorded, Kendrick Lamar parted the crowd outside the Chanel show like the red sea.
Appropriately, he was wearing nothing but Chanel: Chanel bandana atop Chanel dad cap and Chanel glasses, Chanel tweed jacket, pearl Chanel necklace (cleverly looped to cut the length), and monogrammed Chanel jeans because you truly cannot have too much of a good thing.
Kendrick looks so effortlessly elegant, so casually stylish that you probably won't even notice that he's rocking a women's jacket — in fact, almost everything that Kendrick's wearing is technically womenswear, as Chanel doesn't produce menswear besides its one-off collaboration with Pharrell from several years ago (Kendrick's jeans are from that collab).
That's a real feat, to not only make an inconceivably expensive Chanel outfit look toss-on-and-go cool but to also get this natural of a fit from clothes ostensibly designed as and cut to fit like womenswear. If ever anyone doubted Kendrick Lamar's personal style (did anyone?), let them be proven wrong.
Don't misunderstand me, by the way — I don't think anything, clothing especially, needs to be restrained by outdated gender norms. The reason I'm harping on the "womenswear" angle is simply because clothes are typically cut to fit gendered body types. That's why fit models exist: so designers can test their samples on the human form.
Knowing that, you'd expect Kendrick's Chanel jacket to be a little too small in the waist, for instance (and perhaps there's a reason why he hasn't buttoned it), but he instead nails the shoulders and sleeves, neatly contrasting the relaxed cut of his jeans with the jacket's refined, abbreviated cut.
Like I said, it's inherently difficult to pull off this flavor of fancy clothing. You run the risk of the garments wearing you if you aren't either wearing something pretty simple or you simply don't have the swag.
But because Kendrick Lamar has affected a pretty timeless look — jacket, T-shirt, jeans — with a pretty perfect fit on each garment, he's pulling off Chanel in a way that I haven't seen since, again, Pharrell x Chanel. Oh, and his visible confidence is absolutely crucial to making this work.
Now that Timothée Chalamet is also in league with Chanel, I wonder if the number of male Chanel ambassadors will slowly tick upwards. Obviously, no one's gonna top Kendrick in terms of pure steeze but Timmy
If so, they've got good taste: Kendrick Lamar doesn't just show up for anyone, you know.
