A strange spectacle has haunted the pages of the showbiz sections recently. The rapper Kanye West, known now only as ‘Ye’, traipsing through various metropolises covered head to toe in black while his wife, the hitherto-unknown Australian architect Bianca Censori, walks beside him in increasingly strange and more revealing outfits.
As paparazzi cameras flash, Censori accompanies Ye in outfits made up of little more than sheer tights, duct tape and, on more than one occasion, a stuffed pillow. Censori’s outfits aren’t just eye-catching because they’re breaking public indecency laws (as they did when she went underwear-less in Paris), but because they’re downright weird. Because so little is known about Censori before Ye, it has led many to question, how much of this is she consenting to?
Here’s what we do know: Bianca Censori grew up in a well-heeled neighbourhood of Ivanhoe, Melbourne, known as one of the “most prestigious” suburbs of the city. She attended a “progressive” nearby private school, Carey Baptist Grammar, which charges $37,976 (£19,647) a year. According to peers, Censori “always ran in private school circles” and was described as being a “social butterfly”.
Aged 18, Censori enrolled to study Architecture at the University of Melbourne, but like Ye, she has an entrepreneurial side. At uni, she co-founded her own jewellery brand, Nylons, with a close friend. The label gathered traction, and one New Zealander recalls following Censori on Instagram around this time period. “I liked the content she posted and she and her friend group had quite a sexy, fun fashion sense,” she says. “Her posts on her personal page were just like classic young, hot, stylish twenty-something year-old posts. Photos of her at the beach, going out with friends, going to dinner.”
So how does an ordinary architecture post-grad end up marrying one of the most famous men in the world? Well, firstly, she works for him. After working as student architect for three years at Melbourne-based architecture agency DP Toscano, Censori joined Yeezy as an Architectural Designer in 2020 and moved to Los Angeles. Quite the leap, but Censori was gifted. “It was surprising because she was still so young in the profession,” her former boss Joe Toscano told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It was only the fact that it had happened so quickly and so soon, not because I didn’t think that she had the skills to do it [...] She obviously made an impression on Kanye West, and she made that impression because she’s actually very talented.”
Plus, she already had friends who moved in similar circles to the Yeezy crew, including her bestie Gadir Rajab, who is co-founder of the Kanye-approved fashion brand Raga Malak. Censori and West got together in late 2022, and it was then that Censori started appearing in the papers, wearing all sorts of avant-garde hosiery. Kanye’s fingerprint was all over it.
This is nothing new for Ye. Less than a year earlier, in January of 2022, he was dating actress Julia Fox. Addressing Ye’s obsession with image in her recent memoir Down the Drain, Fox recalls how West offered her a boob job and tried to get her to sign a non-disclosure agreement so she wouldn’t share the details of their relationship (she refused). “I feel like he’s using me in some weird, twisted game,” Fox writes of the relationship, calling herself a “pawn” in West’s “grand master plan to get back at his ex-wife.” “It makes me feel dirty,” she says.
Fox also claimed their relationship was a publicity stunt, noting: “The only time he engages is when the camera is on us, when he will grab me and kiss me passionately.” She also claims that he requested she change outfit mid-date when he didn’t like what she had chosen herself, and had a stylist meet her in the restaurant bathroom with new clothing for her to wear.
Before Fox, West styled Kim Kardashian for the entirety of their seven-year marriage. In an early clip from the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, West can be seen demanding that Kim throw out multiple items from her closet. “I always thought I had really good style, until I met my husband and he told me that I had the worst style,” Kardashian has said. When the pair split and Kardashian began choosing her own outfits, West would mock her. “Kanye called me [after an event]. He told me my career’s over and then he showed me a picture of Marge Simpson wearing something similar,” she recalled on her reality TV show.
This has led some to question whether his influence over Censori is Ye exhibiting the hallmarks of coercive control, whereby someone manipulates their partner into behaving exactly how they want them to behave. Coercive control can be exerted via dictating a partner’s clothing choices. “To me, how he dresses Bianca is like saying ‘This is my woman. Look at what I’ve got, aren’t I great?’” says BACP accredited sex, relationship, and trauma therapist Cate Campbell. “Initially, it’s part of the love bombing,” she explains. “It’s things like, ‘Oh, I would love you in this [item] or wearing this [item].’ The control is so subtle, and it builds up so gradually that people are often flattered at first.”
“People are so thrilled their partner is doing things for them, that they don’t have to be bothered to do those things themselves,” Campbell agrees. “They think it’s great. But gradually, over time, they find that their independence has been eroded.”
Then there are claims that it’s not just Censori’s outfits that Ye may be controlling. A series of stories have appeared in the tabloids over the past year alleging West’s control over Censori’s behaviour, too, from what she eats to whether or not she is allowed to speak. As one source said, “Kanye has a set of rules for Bianca, which includes never speak and wear what he wants her to wear. She is also required to eat certain food items and to work out even though Kanye doesn’t work out.”
These accusations have been exacerbated by claims that Censori’s parents (who are rumoured to have never met their son-in-law) are increasingly concerned for her. Insiders have accused West of “shutting her out” from her family and parading her around like a “trophy pony.” The Evening Standard has reached out to West and Censori for comment.
But according to PR expert and long-time Kanye West fan Quincy Dash, West’s methods aren’t sinister. “What we’re seeing with Bianca is a little bit of Kanye returning to his old self, like when he first got with Kim,” he says. “Every person he dates, he makes his muse. He’s a giving guy, he wants to include them in everything he does.” He continues: “With Bianca, you see him smiling more, going back to his artistry. Quite frankly, he could get anyone to wear those clothes, but he picks his own girlfriends because he wants them to be the star of the moment.”
In fact, Dash thinks that Censori has more power over West than we necessarily assume. He notes how West has given up on a lot of his more polarised political positioning since dating Bianca. And the timelines match up: one of West’s biggest controversies — when he declared “Defcon 3” on Jewish people in November 2022 — was a month before he and Bianca were rumoured to be dating. The backlash was enough to see Ye dropped from his Adidas partnership, tanking his net worth. But the rapper has tapered out his offensive rants since then. “He’s giddy,” Dash explains. “He’s even speaking to paparazzi these days — before he’d just walk past them, push them, attack them.”
And while Censori may seem a sad sight traipsing beside West in paparazzi pics, Instagram tells a different story: in pictures posted by friends of her birthday, in which Censori wore a barely-there leather bikini to dinner and drinks, she can also be seen writhing around in a pool of cash, laughing. In earlier images from her life pre-Kanye, she wears similar outfits to now: a chainmail bikini with a metal headpiece, a low-cut boob tube, a vest made out of seatbelts. And back in March 2022, before she had been linked with Kanye romantically, Censori and one of her fellow Yeezy colleagues designed a cocktail table that depicts a woman bent over and bound in ropes. The drinks are balanced on her back.
Dash also notes that West’s influence is a fast-track ticket to increased fame, should somebody want it. And judging from the behaviour of his exes, Kardashian and Fox, they usually welcome it. “I mean, look back at when he got with Amber Rose. Nobody knew her,” Dash recalls. “But by the end of 2010, everybody knew her. He made sure of that. He’s a great marketer, he’s a good PR. I do think Kim’s still connected to him for that reason, she still calls him for advice. It can come across as controlling, but I think he’s trying to say, ‘Listen to me and you’ll go far.’”
Coerced dressing is usually in the pursuit of modesty — maxi skirts instead of minis, long sleeves instead of short, anything in the name of covering up — yet West is doing the opposite of that, he’s showing Censori off. “You even see it when the paparazzi are taking pictures. You see him let her walk first, he’s positioning her,” Dash notes. But according to Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, an expert at SHERA Domestic Abuse Research Group, this is just as bad. “Research indicates that coercive controllers, specifically abusive men, seek to control the presentation of femininity that the women they victimise are allowed,” she says. “They do this by controlling their hair style, use of make-up, clothing and other behaviours. With coercive control, the abuser is attempting to control and punish the victim into a permanent state of subjugation.”
To make matters worse, Ye’s consistent parading of Bianca appears to have settled in the heads of his fans as an excuse to objectify and degrade her. Just last week, West was arrested on charges of battery after he allegedly punched a man who assaulted Censori. “He put his hands under her dress, directly on her body, he grabbed her waist, he spun her around, and then he blew her kisses. She was battered and sexually assaulted,” said a witness. But nothing’s stopping Ye from his new crusade of relentless sexual imagery. A few days ago, he announced the launch of his own porn production company, ‘Yeezy Porn’, which he plans to launch with Stormy Daniels’ ex-husband Mike Moz. “Yeezy Porn Is Cumming,” the rapper tweeted, directing his fans to head to Yeezy.com.
Whether Censori is a pawn in Ye’s quest to have the “best undressed” girlfriend in the world (a term he has used) or she is a willing accomplice in his new hyper-sexualised era, we just hope she hasn’t signed an NDA so one day we can hear her side of the story.