It took several minutes for the Paris fashion week audience to realise they had just witnessed Kanye West make his first ever appearance as a catwalk model.
With his black hoodie pulled up over a Balenciaga baseball cap, there was something familiar about the man in an oversized flak jacket and baggy leather jeans – the beard, the lurching swagger – and after some zooming in on their phone videos, the penny dropped: one of the most influential musicians of his generation had just added catwalk modelling to an eclectic CV that encompasses 21 Grammys, fashion collections and collaborations from Paris to New York, a long-running guest cameo role in the Kardashian celebrity circus, and a near-miss at a run for the White House.
