Rapper Kanye West has released a collection of gold jewellery his wife Kim Kardashian has been wearing on red carpets for months.
For his first-ever line of bling, the Flashing Lights hitmaker designed 12 pieces with top jewellery maker Jacob Arabo, a hip hop legend also known as Jacob the Jeweller who has serviced rap royalty such as LL Cool J, Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. since the 1990s.
The pair dug deep into Italian art history while crafting the collection, finding inspiration from 14th-century Florentine art, like Donatello’s bas-relief portrait, throughout the design process.
“I wanted to create something that represented timeless love,” Kanye tells U.S. Vogue of the thinking that went into the classical pieces.
The superstar further expressed the everlasting love theme in a unique and subtle marketing campaign he launched several months ahead of the line’s official release – in the build-up to Friday’s hushed unveiling of the collection, his reality TV star wife Kim has been wearing her husband’s pieces for several high-profile red carpet appearances since August (16).
This isn’t the first time West has sold a collection he designed without directly promoting the product. Last month (Mar16) his Yeezy season four clothing line sold out online within minutes after his wife Kim and her younger half-sibling Kylie Jenner made subtle hints about the launch on their social media accounts.
Fans can purchase Kanye’s gold jewellery on the yeezysupply.com website. Prices on the pendants, medallions, chains and necklaces range from $1,530 (£1,236) to $13,360 (£10,800) per item.
It is not known if any of the pieces were stolen in the raid on Kim’s Paris hotel suite last October (16). Thieves tied the star up and gagged her at gunpoint before swiping jewellery and electronics.
Gavin Ryan reports with thanks to Australian-Charts.com
