kai cenat just showed his first vivet collection at nyfw and the internet has a lot of feelings

kai cenat's vivet brand has been a billboard, a sewing lesson, and a new york times think-piece for weeks now. on september 12, per pausemag and afrotech's coverage, the first actual collection dropped at new york fashion week, making the whole thing very, very real.

chat, the internet has entered a new stage of grief.

the first wave of responses, according to social threads circulating after the reveal, was mostly disbelief, and not the negative kind. a significant chunk of people who fully expected to laugh apparently came away saying the collection looked better than anticipated. that seemed to catch a lot of people off guard, including people who were openly showing up to clown.

then there's the crowd that has been locked in since the billboard photos. per the discourse, a portion of his audience had already decided vivet was going to work before a single garment was shown, based entirely on how seriously he was taking the whole thing. the sewing story, the turned-down partnerships, building it without outside money, per afrotech's reporting he said something to the effect of people wanting in and him saying he could do it alone. that narrative apparently landed with people who wanted to see it land.

the skeptic corner is also active. several threads are pointing out that nyfw has hosted celebrity vanity projects before, and that a good debut collection and a real fashion brand are two different things. nobody's wrong about that. it's a fair read. it's also the least interesting version of the conversation and the skeptics know it.

there's a genuinely funny subset of responses from people who are mad at themselves for being interested. the lore on this one has been building for months and apparently the collection actually showing up in physical space triggered something in people who were treating the whole pivot as a bit.

some of the more measured takes, per the comment sections, are asking what happens to the streaming side of things now. the new york times quote about potentially quitting at his peak is still floating around as context. nobody seems to have a clean answer and kai hasn't offered one.

the times of india called it vivet taking over new york city, which is a sentence that exists now.

anyway. the clothes showed up and now everyone has to decide if they were rooting for him the whole time.