Shia LaBeouf, style icon. It’s a tough pill to swallow but the evidence arguing for that title is there. No less an authority than Kanye West once rapped “I wish I dressed as fresh as Shia LaBeouf,” in an early version of “No More Parties in LA,” a line that presumably didn’t make the final cut because Kanye has to be seen as infallible in the world of fashion. According to a new interview with LaBeouf in Esquire, the bromance between himself and West was also one of sharing outfits with each other, with West inspired by LaBeouf’s personal style (which the interview describes as “a mix of military, athleisure, and ‘mostly’ normcore”) enough to evidently rummage through his fits and take some stuff for use in a pop-up shop.
“Around the same time [Kanye asked me to use my clothes] I took my mother to his concert,” LaBeouf told Esquire. “She is, of course, obsessed with Kanye West. When I brought her backstage, he was a fucking sweetheart to her. And it just felt fair. So I’m like, ‘Go for it, my guy. Take everything you want.’ And he did. He took all my fucking clothes. Me and him haven’t really been in contact since he blew up onstage and, you know, shit on me.”
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The blowup in question happened in November 2016 during a Sacramento stop on Kanye’s ill-fated Saint Pablo Tour (“Shia LaBeouf, Kid Cudi feels a way. Give him a call”). LaBeouf, according to Esquire, does not feel a way, saying, “I fucking love Kanye West. He’s going through a lot. And I don’t know where he’s at or what he’s doing.” He does however, add that West “has a lot of my shit,” including the Indiana Jones hat LaBeouf probably got after participating in that godawful fourth film.
It should be mentioned that the interview, done to promote LaBeouf’s role in the upcoming tennis drama Borg vs. McEnroe (he plays the latter), is pretty wild even without the Kanye story, as he candidly discusses his arrest last year for public drunkenness (“I fucked up”) and how it figures into his battle with alcoholism and his public perception as an unstable maverick (“I know you have a job to do… to continue this narrative that I’m a piece of shit” he says to the interviewer at one point). Frankly, that last bit kind of sounds like something Kanye would say. You can read the entire interview here.
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