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Kanye West Cries on BBC Radio Talking About Louise Wilson

It's a touching moment from one of fashion's more controversial figures.
Kanye West attends the memorial service for Louise Wilson. Photo: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

Kanye West attends the memorial service for Louise Wilson. Photo: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

Kanye West sat down with Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 on Thursday for another sure-to-be-legendary interview, and in between talking about giving Nori a sibling ("I'm practicing VERY hard! I try as many times a day as I can!") and meeting Ralph Lauren ("Meeting Paul McCartney was like meeting Ralph Lauren, like whoa — the greatest of their field, the greatest of all time."), he also talked about attending the memorial service for the late Central Saint Martins professor, Louise Wilson, who passed away last May.

"You know, I went to Louise Wilson's memorial, the greatest fashion instructor of all time, and I'm talking about of all timers," he says. "So Louise Wilson was the baddest professor of all time of any fashion school ever, notorious for not letting people stop at a seven, at an eight, pushing people to a twelve."

West continues to list off Wilson-educated designers — Phoebe Philo, Alexander McQueen, Alber Elbaz, Christopher Kane — as examples of those designing at a twelve. But beyond educating the designers which have so clearly influenced him, West also says that Wilson gave him personal advice. 

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"The last time I saw her, we had a dinner at Hakkasan which is my favorite restaurant in London," he tells Lowe. "I think she knew she was going to pass and she just wanted to give me some words of advice going forward. She was asking me about my daughter, my wife, and she said, 'So many students, they don't give it their all, and the problem is, as soon as they do anything halfway good when they're two years old, three years old, their parents clap.' And she just looked at me and she said, 'Kanye, don't clap.'"

"I didn't know we were going to lose her," he continues. "She told me, she said, 'Thank you for the times where we came to performances,' and this really meant a lot to me, she would..." he begins before he breaks down into tears. Lowe gives him a moment to collect himself, and when he agrees to change the subject, West adds, "That's never happened to me in an interview before."

Fashion is clearly more than a passing interest for West, who spent much of the interview explaining why it's so important to him. "I believe the world can only be saved through design," he says, and you can hear the rest in the full interview below.