Lorde’s former stage designer has sided with Kanye West, after the singer suggested he’d ripped off one of her past sets for a recent show.
Earlier this week, Lorde took aim at Kanye and fellow rapper Kid Cudi, noting that the staging for their set at Camp Flog Gnaw festival incorporated a floating glass box, a design she also featured when she appeared at Coachella last year.
Posting on her Instagram story, she wrote: “I’m proud of the work I do and it’s flattering when other artists feel inspired by it, to the extent that they choose to try it on themselves.
“But don’t steal ― not from women or anyone else ― not in 2018 or ever.”
However, Es Devlin - who has previously worked with Lorde, helping design her Coachella stage - admitted she didn’t think the accusation of “stealing” was valid.
Sharing a photo of a glass box stage that dated back more than a decade, she wrote: “I did not design the recent Kids See Ghosts [Kanye and Kid Cudi’s duo name] performance... I worked with Lorde on the design for her Coachella performance… I admire both and see no imitation at work here..
“I think the more interesting point is that both artists, responding to our dis-jointed times, are being drawn to this gesture of the fragile floating room: the world un-moored from gravity... where the rules of civilisation and identity as we have known them may soon no longer apply.”
Lorde and Kanye have worked together in the past, collaborating on a remix of her song ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ taken from the ‘Mockingjay, Part 1’ soundtrack, which she curated.
Kanye also previously used a floating stage on his ‘Saint Pablo’ tour in 2016, which was alluded to on the Taylor Swift track ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, which is largely considered to have been inspired by their feud.