Kanye website offline after swastika T-shirt ad

The website of Kanye West’s Yeezy fashion brand was offline on Wednesday AEDT after it began selling plain white T-shirts with a swastika.

Kanye West aka Ye has been ranting on social media again. Picture: Getty Images

The website of Kanye West’s Yeezy fashion brand was offline on Wednesday AEDT after it began selling plain white T-shirts with a swastika.

The site displayed the message “Something went wrong” and “This store is unavailable”.

West, who now calls himself Ye, appeared in a commercial for the site that aired in southern ­California during the weekend’s Super Bowl.

In the low-budget ad, the rapper was sitting in what appeared to be a dentist’s chair, flashing a set of diamond-encrusted dentures, and saying he had spent all the money for the commercial on the new teeth. He told viewers he had filmed the ad on an iPhone and ­directed them to visit his yeezy.com website.

Immediately after the ad aired on Monday AEDT, Variety reported, the website had a range of West’s fashionwear available, but it changed a short time later and began displaying only a single item – a white T-shirt with a large black swastika on the front, with a $20 price tag.

Variety, citing people familiar with the ad booking process, said the 30-second spot had gone through the usual approval channels, which included a look at the website. Nothing objectionable was flagged.

But by Tuesday the site, which was underpinned by e-commerce firm Shopify, was offline.

“All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify,” Shopify said.

The fresh controversy came just days after West’s account on X went dark in the wake of a days-long rant that included vitriolic, anti-Semitic outbursts.

It was not immediately clear if the artist and entrepreneur, who has spoken openly about struggles with bipolar disorder, had deactivated the account himself or if X took it down.

The rapper, 47, has been locked out of social media platforms in the past, notably when he was banned from X for nearly eight months for violating rules barring incitement to violence.

Ye’s most recent missives ­included comments supporting accused sex trafficker Sean “Diddy” Combs, and repeatedly referred to himself as a “Nazi”.

AFP