Lorde Says Kanye, Kid Cudi Stole a Stage Design

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Last night, Kanye West and Kid Cudi came together for a special collaborative Kids See Ghost performance at Camp Flog Gnaw 2018. One of the key aspects of the Kids See Ghosts live act was a large glass box that encased both performers in it and floated above the festival grounds. Now, Lorde has taken to social media to claim that the aforementioned setup “stole” its look from one of her previous stage designs from 2017.

“I’m proud of the work I do and it’s flattering when other artists are inspired by it, to the extent that they choose to try it on for themselves,” Lorde shares via Instagram. “But don’t steal — not from women or anyone else — not in 2018 or ever.”

As FADER notes, set designer Es Devlin, the stage designer responsible for Lorde’s Coachella 2017 arrangement, previously worked on Kanye West’s Yeezus and Glow In The Dark tours. Devlin later posted on Instagram a set that she created for an edition of the Georges Bizet opera Carmen, which was put on by the English National Opera in 2007. Courtesy of New York Times journalist Joe Coscarelli, Devlin confirmed she did not design the KSG set and gave the following statement:

I admire both and see no imitation at work here. I think the more interesting point is that both artists, responding to our disjointed times, are being drawn to this gesture of the fragile floating room: the world un-moored from gravity, where the rules of civilisation are identity as we have known them may soon no longer apply.

The Times reports that the Kids See Ghosts set was designed by Trask House, the company that previously designed Kanye’s Saint Pablo floating tour stage. Trask House owner John McGuire told the Times that Lorde “wasn’t the first person to use a floating glass box, she won’t be the last. She doesn’t own it, her designer didn’t invent it,” and continued on, “Cubes and floating aren’t new to Kanye West, stage design or architecture. A quick google of floating glass box brings up many instances of suspended glass cubes.”