Kanye West isn’t manipulating wife Bianca Censory into skimpy outfits — it’s ‘performance art’: sources

Kanye West and Bianca Censori simply might be trolling us all.

As the rap superstar, 46, and his wife of 15 months make jaws drop with their bizarre outings — in which she is almost always scantily clad in skintight, often sheer body stockings — it seems they are having the last laugh.

According to a fashion industry source who is close to the pair, West and Censori, 28, know exactly what they are doing. And, despite rumblings that he is manipulating her, insiders say she is totally in on it.

“People are confusing Bianca’s creativity,” the source tells Page Six. “She is a phenomenal personality, a phenomenal actor, who can entertain the public. She’s a performance artist. Bianca is as much a performer as Ye is.”

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It certainly looked like some kind of act on Thursday when West posted an Instagram video of Censori dressed in a lace bodysuit and white heels, lying on a comically large bed and staring intently at her cellphone.

West is nowhere in sight, though you can hear the cameraman — speculated to be him — breathing.

While the video garnered more than 981,000 “likes” from his 20.3 million followers — one of whom cheekily commented, “Why’s she got more clothes on in bed than when she goes outside?” — one member of West’s camp describes the post as “a crucial picture.”

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Malik Yusef, a musical partner of West, tells Page Six: “I think it’s Ye saying, ‘My bitch is living in the lap of luxury. I don’t know what you all are doing today, but I hope you’re all just chilling like me. This is my business.’ The room is all bed. It’s a new context on bedroom.”

It’s also the latest example of Censori flouting convention with her clothing, or lack thereof, all over the world over the past year. She stepped out in Florence, Italy, wearing what appeared to be a pair of sheer tights — no pants or skirt — and clutching a throw pillow to her chest in lieu of a top. There was the skintight red bodysuit in Tokyo, as well as a gold one that completely covered her head and face. In Milan, it was a black napkin-like leotard that covered her some of her front, some of her back and nothing on the sides.

This week in Los Angeles, she went to the Cheesecake Factory in a tiny bandeau top and neon-green tights — which West rolled down at the waist, exposing her butt cheek, before strolling inside.

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It’s all sparked social-media speculation and headlines about whether West is a Svengali-like pupPet master forcing his wife to parade around nearly naked.

But sources tell Page Six that Ye is no controller where Censori is concerned — and is, in fact, dreaming up these see-through concoctions herself.

Says one source who knows them both well: “Maybe she’s using him as her puppet!”

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The fashion source also notes that Censori’s mother, Alexandra, has been with the couple in Los Angeles — one of the many places they live, though they reportedly don’t have a permanent home.

“Her mother was here [in Los Angeles] the other day,” says the fashion source. “Her parents are fine [with the relationship].”

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According to Yussef, “She makes her own decisions on how to dress. I think [she and West] experiment together and say, ‘Hey, this is beautiful.’”

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Last September, Page Six reported that the two dream up the outfits and have a “whole atelier in Italy” that whips them up on the fly.

“Anything he wants to make, they can make it. He’s really just making it on the spot,” said Mowalola Ogunlesi, the Nigerian-born, London-based designer hired by West in 2020 to head his Yeezy Gap collaboration.

“They design it and have an in-house team that creates everything in a day,” said a second designer who has worked with West but asked to remain anonymous.

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Ogunlesi added at the time that “they just buy tights and style it and cut it on [Censori]. … Usually they get Wolford. Tights are not safe when they’re around.”

Censori, a trained architect, works with West on his Yeezy fashion line — as does Dov Charney, the former CEO of American Apparel. The fashion industry source says, “Bianca is an important part of the management team. She’s controlling the business in a very big way.”

Asked what her role is, the source shares, “She’s a senior advisor to Ye and a senior creative and business advisor to the entire team. … She interacts with people independently of Ye. Bianca has a lot of influence — she helps control the design, who we’re selling to, who we’re collaborating with. She’s fully in.”

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Out of the office, according to Yusseef, “Ye allows her a platform to be her full self. She knows he has power and she knows she is protected. He’s got a bunch of men around him with power. So she can experience her full self without any deleterious effects … without being harmed or touched or aggressed by anybody.”

Even while growing up in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe, Censori was far from a shrinking violet. 

Hanging out at Australia’s Rainbow Serpent music festival in 2017, she was photographed wearing a revealing top that exposed tassel pasties on her nipples. After attending a ritzy private school and developing a reputation for being a social butterfly, she landed at University of Melbourne and graduated with an architecture degree in 2017.

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She was briefly partnered in a jewelry business called Nylons and characterized as a local “It” girl by a school friend, according to the Daily Mail.

In 2020, Censori met West when he slipped into her DMs and wrote, “come work for me.”

According to a former friend, she dropped out of college to do so.

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Following West’s 2021 split with Kim Kardashian, Censori began working for West as his architectural designer, and the two wed in December 2022, one month after his divorce from Kardashian was finalized.

“Kim hates her,” a source told Page Six in 2023. “She’s pretty and Kim hates pretty girls.”

Nevertheless, things have apparently mellowed between them. Earlier this month, Kardashian and Censori were seen hanging out together at a San Francisco listening party for West’s new album “Vultures.”

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One source told The Post: “He’s in full promo mode right now.”

And, late last year, when West hosted a listening party at Art Basel, Censori accompanied him and three of his four children with Kardashian.

“Right before the performance started, she left the stage with security, and she was carrying one of his kids, Chicago,” a source who worked with West on the party told The Post. “She looked very maternal. I think she is definitely a muse for Kanye.”

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A source confirms the muse status — but also maintains Censori is in the limelight at the pleasure of West.

“You only see her when he needs to parade her for some sort of fashion moment,” the source tells Page Six. “He partners with whoever’s hot at the moment. He’s approaching 50, and he’s harder to stay relevant — especially with his loony history. The revolving door keeps moving faster and faster.”

For now, though, it’s apparently all about the performance and doing it their way, no matter what anyone thinks.

“They have people worldwide watching them,” the fashion source says. “Sometimes the highest form of art is to not say anything.”