{"id":346358,"date":"2026-09-14T14:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346358\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T14:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:42:19","slug":"kai-cenats-runway-show-felt-like-2016-new-york-in-the-best-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346358\/","title":{"rendered":"Kai Cenat’s Runway Show Felt Like 2016 New York in the Best Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe energy outside Cipriani, in Lower Manhattan, across from the Charging Bull statue on Broadway<\/a>, seemed conspicuously suspended in a different time. It was as if crossing the threshold into the Financial District sent me back a decade, to the genesis of this current generation\u2019s cultural aesthetic\u2014to the lines at VFiles, the SoHo clothing store<\/a> whose Howard St. storefront once served as epicenter of the nascent fusion of the worlds of streetwear, hip-hop, and high fashion. All of this was because Kai Cenat<\/a>, the popular Twitch streamer and content creator, was making his runway debut. The fashion show for his brand Vivet\u2019s first collection drew a crowd of the current generation\u2019s innovators, giving a reminiscent feeling to the last time a popular figure came crashing through the gates of mainstream fashion.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn attendance that night were popular streamers like Jasontheween, Rakai, and Duke Dennis, alongside more traditional celebrity names: Jaden Smith, Luka Sabbat, Lauryn Hill (!). Popular fashion podcasters and journalists from the New York Times filtered through the crowd as well. It reminded me of the pre-pandemic days of fashion week pop-ups in the shadow of Ye\u2019s YZY Szn launches, when the crowds outside seemed as consequential as whoever had a seat inside. Social media had given a generation of streetwear obsessives and aspiring artists a way to build their own audiences, and fashion was beginning to accommodate them. At Cipriani, the streamers had brought another audience into the room.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I first saw this space, I was at awe,\u201d Cenat told me after the show. This particular Cipriani, with its neo-Renaissance-style ceilings and grand, opulent interior, was the venue for Alexander Wang\u2019s fall 2013 show, where a then-on-the-rise A$AP Rocky sat front row. The room was part of how Kai wanted people to experience the clothes. \u201cAnd perception is just as important as everything, the clothes, the music, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGuests received personalized invites, a Vivet journal documenting Kai\u2019s journey starting the brand, replete with Polaroids taped in the pages. Initially, Cenat wanted to call the line Eterna. In the early pages of the journal, there are photos of a red hockey jersey bearing the name, which he wrote was already taken. \u201cIt was hard for me to move away from this name,\u201d he noted. \u201cI have to start again.\u201d According to the show notes, Vivet takes its name from Latin meaning \u201che, she, or it will live forever,\u201d a reference to his ambition to make clothes that outlast trends.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAnother page shows a photo of a small leather pillow, the first item he sewed himself. In an entry about his private sewing lessons, he admitted, \u201cI was very impatient,\u201d and described initially hating hand stitching. The work hurt his hands, but he came to understand its uses: closing gaps and finishing parts of a garment a machine couldn\u2019t reach. The runway opened with the Beginner Hoodie, the first Vivet piece Cenat sewed by hand, following months spent studying construction and manufacturing in Italy. The show notes describe the opening hoodies and sweatpants as deliberately misshapen, with an oversized silhouette and heavy jackets worn open.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n\tAt first, Kai shared clips of that learning process on social media, hoping fans who missed him after he took time away from streaming would appreciate the transparency. Instead he became a meme, with much of the internet calling his journey into fashion disingenuous. That criticism, too, felt familiar. Reviewing Kanye West<\/a>\u2019s 2011 womenswear debut, The Telegraph\u2019s Lisa Armstrong wrote: \u201cIt was the equivalent of Karl Lagerfeld launching a hip-hop career: i.e. absurd.\u201d Beyond just seeing him as an outsider, the loudest critiques of Cenat\u2019s foray into fashion seem to be wrapped up in a broader disdain for streamer culture writ large.<\/p>\n

\n\tInterestingly, it was the streamer community\u2019s presence that made the show feel innovative. In February, designer Elena Velez cast Clavicular, the streamer known for promoting extreme methods of improving his appearance, in her New York Fashion Week show. That felt like a gimmick. (The designer similarly invited CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, whose absurd podcast stories about life inside the agency have gone viral on TikTok, to walk in her presentation over the weekend.) The streamers at Kai\u2019s show were his contemporaries, people from the world in which he\u2019d built his career. I spotted Rakai, a fellow Twitch streamer and Cenat prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who frequently appears alongside him, whose rise on Twitch over the past few years has made him all but ubiquitous on young people\u2019s feeds.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cYou have to be honest with who you are and what world you stem from,\u201d Cenat told me. \u201cSo it was just very honest to include those people in the world.\u201d A handwritten chart in the journal lays out the show\u2019s three stages: Under \u201cStage 1,\u201d \u201cself doubt\u201d and \u201coverthinking\u201d sit alongside \u201crough seams\u201d and \u201ctears.\u201d By \u201cStage 3,\u201d he\u2019s writing \u201cSelf Belief\u201d and \u201cConfident.\u201d The show progressed in three similarly themed acts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just was honest with myself,\u201d Cenat explained. \u201cThe way I was writing in my journal is exactly what I wanted to put on the runway.\u201d He describes the progression \u201cfrom act one being lost and not knowing what to do and using simpler items to the clothes getting stronger and stronger and stronger.\u201d By the third act, he said, \u201ceverything was super powerful, same with the music that represents everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe clothes moved from hoodies and sweatpants into heavy leather overcoats, skinny denim, and boots, before arriving at tailored suiting and silk. Cotton canvas, neoprene, denim, and leather formed the collection\u2019s material base, with warm ground tones interrupted by white, silver, mustard, and blue. Exposed seams and hand-applied waxes and varnishes emphasized the construction and surface of the clothes. Even the styling followed the progression: Jackets and coats worn open in the first two acts were closed in the third.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps most surprising was how complete the collection was. Rather than launch with a small capsule of a few pieces, Vivet\u2019s first season included menswear, womenswear, outerwear, and footwear. You could certainly argue it stretched an early designer\u2019s efforts a bit thin, but Cenat did execute a number of impressive looks, and the attention to material quality was immediately noticeable in person. The waxed cargo jacket, made of custom dyed heavyweight canvas, had the kind of detailed construction you\u2019d expect from materials-focused luxury brands like Loro Piana.<\/p>\n

\n\tTowards the end of the show, a female model came trundling down the runway, adorned in one of the collection\u2019s more elegant coats crafted from a buoyant faux fur. Her exaggerated stomps made the coat flow in almost hypnotic rhythm. \u201cYes, that was great,\u201d Cenat told me when I mentioned the look. He was pleased with the womenswear in particular: \u201cThey did incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe mood by the end of the show was something of pleasant surprise. Even if you weren\u2019t among those making memes about Kai Cenat trying to start a fashion brand, seeing this kid known for being a goofball in his bedroom put out a genuinely respectable line of product, with a coherent vision and presentation, felt kind of inspiring in the most 2010s way. It was reminiscent of the optimism around the rise of creatives like Virgil Abloh, who, in reconstructing who and what counted as high fashion, helped lay the foundation for a more expansive mainstream culture.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that sense, a line Cenat wrote in the invitation journal feels a little easier to take at face value. \u201cDon\u2019t be boxed in!!!\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou can do anything in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The energy outside Cipriani, in Lower Manhattan, across from the Charging Bull statue on Broadway, seemed conspicuously suspended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[48920,19344,9,11,10,10903],"class_list":["post-346358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-kai-cenat","tag-kanye-west","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nyfw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}