Kanye West's Yeezy Sneakers Sell for Record $1.8 Mln

A pair of shoes designed and worn by American rapper Kanye West has sold for $1.8m, Sotheby's announced on Monday.

The rapper's 2008 Grammy worn Nike Air Yeezy prototypes were debuted at West's performance at the 2008 Grammy Awards, setting off a social media frenzy among fashionistas.

The buyer was the sneaker investing platform, "RARES", a leader in fractional ownership that allows users to invest in sneakers by buying and trading shares in them.

https://twitter.com/Sothebys/status/1386694184942325760?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

RARES paid the highest publicly recorded price for the pair, beating the previous record that was held by a pair of Nike Air Jordan 1s that sold for $615,000 in 2020, which was designed for and worn by basketball player Michael Jordan.

The prototypes were put up for sale at Sotheby's by New York collector Ryan Chang and are a black leather sized-12 Nike Air Yeezy 1 and have a Yeezy forefoot strap and the brand's signature Y medallion lace locks in pink.

TWest ended his collaboration with Nike in 2013 and took the brand to Adidas, where the sneakers brand allocated an estimated $1.7 billion in sales in 2020, according to Forbes.

In a statement, Gerome Sapp, RARES co-founder and CEO, noted that the goal in purchasing such an iconic shoe and a piece of history is to increase accessibility and empower the communities that birthed sneaker culture with the tools to gain financial freedom through RARES.