Places I’ve seen people wearing Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo merch over the past few months: the airport, a roller rink, and pretty much every block in New York. You can’t turn a corner, it seems, without hitting an “Ultralight Beam” or “I Feel Like Pablo” shirt sporting Cali Thornhill DeWitt’s unmistakable fonts. Now Stereogum is pointing out that Forever 21 is selling a shirt whose color, font, and spacing look similar to West’s merch, specifically the Ultralight Beam design West himself wore at the Yeezy season-three show. But this one bears the gnomic message “SIMON DE CYRENE FOR THE WORLD.” (For the non-theologians here, Simon De Cyrene carried Jesus’s cross on the way to his crucifixion. How that connects to Yeezus is anyone’s guess, but it may have to do with the company’s propensity for inscribing Biblical verses on its bags.)
While West has weathered his own accusations of, shall we say, “borrowing” from brands as varied as Helmut Lang and VPL, he’s not immune to being knocked off himself. Last month, a Zara men’s look book was released that had Twitter buzzing about how similar the clothes and styling looked to Yeezy season three. We’ve reached out to Forever 21 for a comment, and will update this when we hear back. As for West, he’s been silent on the matter on Twitter thus far.
