Hood By Air (Q4764)
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Hood By Air is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Hood By Air |
Hood By Air is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2010
creative director
2010
co-founder
There are many levels of crowd-pleasing that need to happen at a fashion show in order for it to be successful, starting with the front row and extending all the way through to those tuned in on their smartphones. Shayne Oliver ofHood By Airis acutely aware of this, and has more eyes on his brand than ever before. His ragtag posse of underground club kids and art-world friends was joined by some pretty high-profile faces at the show today, includingNaomi Campbell,Jaden Smith, will.i.am, and rappers Rick Ross and Juicy J. Dedicated HBA fans will know that Oliver’s talents go beyond the runway—with an album made in collaboration with London-based electronic producer Arca in the pipeline for fall, he’s adding musician credits to his résumé.Wench, the duo’s joint musical moniker, shared double billing with HBA’s distinctive logo throughout today’s collection. Essentially this was Oliver’s take on the tour merch phenomenon, and a clever way to reclaim some of the fashion spotlight that has been stolen by what the likes ofKanye West,Drake, andJustin Bieberhave started. Of course there’s nothing basic about Oliver’s idea of a band tee; sometimes spelled out in big bold letters and other times on name labels reminiscent of a corporate function, the wordwenchappeared at the cuff of hooded blazers, on button-downs that were fashioned into sexy halter-neck tops and backless blouses. The reworking of traditional Wall Street suiting was impressive overall and came spliced with all the key streetwear and gender-fluid HBA touchstones: Think suit as zippered jumpsuit, or suit cut off the shoulder with corsetry underneath—executive realness at its most fabulous and subversive.That said, Oliver understands that the simplest designs in his repertoire are no less important. The provocative slogan T-shirts that he launched with years ago are being replaced by logo polo shirts for Spring 2017, some of which came printed with the word Hustler, and all of which are likely to be a hit on the shop floor. Given that Oliver teamed with PornHub, perhaps one of the world’s most trafficked websites, on a video series this season, it makes him and Larry Flynt somewhat strange bedfellows. Regardless of the moral questions that hover over the collaboration, it is part of a growing trend of unlikely fashion partnerships that has sprung up as young designers grapple with the changing retail landscape—early this year, J.W.
Anderson chose to stream his menswear show on Grindr, the gay dating app, for example. In any case, it’s clear that Oliver is successfully marching to the beat of his own drum as he explores new paths.
11 September 2016
Hood By Airmakes things difficult. These images were shot days after its Spring 2017 show in Paris, a frenzied cruise in semi-darkness through a gay sauna in a seedy part of the Marais that culminated in a synchronized swim in the hammam’s subterranean pool (don’t think: Busby Berkeley). The clothes were glimpsed only in passing, as models pressed against bystanders and then moved along. “We revisit things that people know about HBA here, like logo placement. Because it’s recognizable in the dark,” said Shayne Oliver postshow. “We push newer ideas forward in the light.”The light he’s talking about is Hood By Air’s biannual shows that are part of New York women’s Fashion Week, staged with increasingly polished production values (and, indeed, lots of lights). While Oliver himself is loath to put labels likemenswearorwomenswearon his garments, he understands the demands of presenting collections with those market restrictions. Hence the fact his Paris “shows” boycott the runway in favor of atmospheric locales and unconventional formats. “We just want to celebrate Hood By Air in the men’s market,” said Oliver. “When people are reviewing it against something that is very tailored, it feels weird . . . we’re not competing with them.”So what are these January and July shows all about for Oliver? Research and development, it seems; he talked about the garments acting as the reference for the show to be staged in September, also acknowledging the very real business behind this creativity—that these clothes will drop earlier, satisfying retailers with an advance delivery. Almost like a Hood By Air recollection then, although the ingenious complexity of Oliver’s work couldn’t be further from bland commercialism. There’s something unsettling about what Oliver shows, often with implications of violence in the slicing, mutilated pieces distorting perceptions of the body within. But he saw these looks as a kind of “positive utilitarianism,” also linking to the military theme that ran through the season. Although Oliver’s utility wound up in hospital garb: Rather than garments slicing apart the body in attack, the outfits were centered around healing, with their trusses, bandages, and even built-in leg braces. What was bandage and what was bondage? The contrast between flesh strapped for pleasure and flesh strapped to cure pain was never quite clear. Oliver said these spaces were about relaxation, about a relaxed attitude to sexuality, and an ease with the body.
It wound up like a Netflix-and-chill session watchingThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre, helped by a decibel-shattering soundtrack. It was uncomfortable, but it also pushed us out of our comfort zone.
30 June 2016
In a relatively short space of time, Shayne Oliver has moved his brandHood By Airfrom the fringes and into the center of the fashion conversation. It’s thanks to brands like HBA that hot-button issues around gender and race are on the runway agenda at all. A remix ofBeyoncé’s “Formation"—arguably the most talked-about song of the moment—came blaring through the speakers before the first model came out in patent leather killer heels, the sleeve of her coat trailing behind her like a cape. Oliver has been subverting notions of streetwear since the beginning, and this season he turned familiar tropes upside down with renewed audacity; one zip-up jacket came with black duffel bags for sleeves, and North Face’s ubiquitous puffer was given a makeover in sleek patent leather andheld aloft like an oversize life jacket by Slava Mogutin, the radical Russian LGBT artist who walked in the show.Oliver titled his collection “Pilgrimage” and cited the idea of transience and transmigration as overarching themes. Aside from killer stiletto heels, models both male and female wore rubber waders that seemed fit for a flood of apocalyptic proportions; barcoded baggage tags were laced into sneakers, and shiny black bustiers were fashioned from the plastic used to wrap baggage at the airport, a look that rendered the body itself as cargo. Set those ideas to the soundtrack of Beyoncé, who sings of Louisiana’s tumultuous past in her new single, then factor in the current refugee crisis in Europe, and it was hard to ignore the politics beneath the surface here.Whatever the subtext, it’s important to remember the journey that Oliver has made as a designer. After winning the LVMH Special Prize little over a year ago he moved his operation to Milan, and the new clothes reflect the strides he’s made: There’s a confidence that runs through, from the mind-boggling technical complexities of the outwear to the cheeky slogan bodysuits to the streetwise buckets hats that were produced in collaboration with Kangol—pieces that are, incidentally, available to buy now. Yes, the fashion system might be broken, but clearly that's not stopping Oliver and his instinct for what’s next.
14 February 2016
“It was all about childhood in the Caribbean. And growing up around uniforms. We had such high education, and we couldn’t do anything with it—high education and low living quarters. So it was about cutting up and altering that school uniform, as we did.”Shayne Oliverwas wearing a long, striped knitted column dress as he gave his articulate coda to Hood By Air’s radically chopped-up schoolyard collection, after a show to which the notes had been printed on a detention card registering many misdemeanors. A journalist earnestly asked Oliver for his position on gender-neutral clothes, as there had been equal numbers of men and women wearing spliced and suspended skirts and dresses on the runway. Which is meant for which? To Oliver, that’s hardly a burning issue anymore. “At this point,” he replied, patiently, “we are wearingHood By Air, just as part of the family.”It’s odd how things come around. There was a fashion movement in the ’90s called deconstructionism, which mainly came from then-marginalized and poor young designers who bonded in basements in Antwerp and London. In some ways, Hood By Air is their 21st-century successor, working to take apart conventional garments, shrinking the components, and making something new and unrecognizable out of them, using zippers and the language of bondage paraphernalia.Still, Hood By Air’s collective way of working is different, and in many ways more successfully social revolutionary than those who went before, many of whom eventually became absorbed into the commercial style of mainstream minimalism. For one thing, HBA’s expression is far more exuberantly sexual, fun, and democratic than the intellectually exclusive ’90s crew. For another, the HBA ethos is genuinely at the leading edge of a social change that has swept through legislation this year, in ways former generations never have dreamed would come to pass. And for a third: Hood By Air is a brand that actually sells. It doesn’t look like highfalutin fashion, but—and this would never have happened before either—it’s welcomed as part ofFashion Week, recognized as a now-unmissable draw for international buyers and press. One up for the credibility of New York fashion.
13 September 2015
"In New York, I'm pushing out commentary," Shayne Oliver was saying after his show the other day. Maybe he was acknowledging his place on the front line of new American fashion, maybe it was his status as a totem in the LGBTQ community. Either way, his label, Hood by Air, has quickly laid down some fierce roots. But it's clearly an intense enough position to find himself placed in that Oliver said showing in Paris came as a relief. "And this felt like a celebration."What he was getting from Paris was "luxury is fun." He talked about "self-obsession, the idea of giving yourself as a temple to worship." Narcissism fed right into one of his collection's more peculiar undercurrents: the glamour of old Hollywood. Think of it in its eeriest manifestation,Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond. There were clothes here that felt like the dissected wardrobe of an aged vedette, taken apart and reconstructed as a train on a pair of shorts, or pleated culottes, or the trailing bits and pieces that diffused the silhouettes. Some of the shoes looked lifted from Baby Jane's closet. Kiss curls and HBA hair-grips accessorized the illusion. Oliver said he'd been spending more time in L.A. That was one reason why he wanted his show to be held outside. It was also why that eerie glamour was so important to the collection.But, equally, he insisted he was thinking about the way toddlers dress themselves—or would like to. Picture big baby clothes. Playtime. You need that kind of help to penetrate the codes of an HBA collection, especially when the mouths of some of the models were fixed open by fearsome appurtenances (memories of McQueen). The padlocked pacifier? Consider the implications of such an object for a second. Grisly.Almost no garment was intact. Almost everything was slashed, partitioned, dissected. That word again. These were clothes in transition, for a tribe that is also seeking a redefinition. As such, they were an idea, more a philosophy in fabric than a viable proposal for a wardrobe. But where else would Shayne Oliver go to philosophize than Paris?
28 June 2015
What is that?This may be the first question a human being asks of him or herself. Watch an infant's eyes dance over the space around him: Is that shape a bottle or a cat? Is that my mother or a chair? The need to identify the forms that surround us runs very, very deep—it's a matter of survival, distinguishing between that which provides us with care and the stuff that poses a threat. The unclassifiable defaults into the "threat" category.Hood by Air impresario Shayne Oliver likes to play in a liminal space, where things and people are neither this nor that. And his desire to elude category was front and center this season, in a collection that essentially took on human evolution and sought to defuse the fear we all feel when confronted with the unfamiliar. His strategy was pretty much to take the most mundane stuff in our wardrobes—khakis, button-downs, puffer jackets, sweaters, tees, and so on—and hybridize them or otherwise mess with their customary silhouettes to make them feel alien. Is that a polo or a dress? A camel coat or a tank top? The answer wasn't always clear, or to put it more exactly, the answer was often: It's both. You could read this rejection of binaries as a political stance, at a moment when the transgender rights movement is picking up steam.Or you could just appreciate the clothes, which Oliver said was his primary intention here. His focus on wardrobe staples provided him an opportunity to fill his collection with relatively commercial pieces, like the pleated button-downs or the tailored black wool overcoats detailed with buckles and zips. Even Oliver's more challenging silhouettes were accessible: Perhaps the key item on the HBA runway today was the wide-leg pleated pants, worn either full-volume or buckled in various ways to adapt the shape. It was a cool idea and well-executed. Likewise, the jeans that extended over the foot to create the look of a denim boot, and the wool and puffer hybrids. Occasionally, Oliver's taste for theatrics got the better of him—a halter-neck fur, for instance, came across as rather unsubtle point-making, out of step with the nuance of much of the rest of the collection. In general, though, this show proved that Oliver—with the aid of his HBA entourage—is getting very good at distilling his keen and playful intellect into viable looks. They get his point across just fine. He can afford to stop hammering it home.
16 February 2015
What is that?This may be the first question a human being asks of him or herself. Watch an infant's eyes dance over the space around him: Is that shape a bottle or a cat? Is that my mother or a chair? The need to identify the forms that surround us runs very, very deep—it's a matter of survival, distinguishing between that which provides us with care and the stuff that poses a threat. The unclassifiable defaults into the "threat" category.Hood by Air impresario Shayne Oliver likes to play in a liminal space, where things and people are neither this nor that. And his desire to elude category was front and center this season, in a collection that essentially took on human evolution and sought to defuse the fear we all feel when confronted with the unfamiliar. His strategy was pretty much to take the most mundane stuff in our wardrobes—khakis, button-downs, puffer jackets, sweaters, tees, and so on—and hybridize them or otherwise mess with their customary silhouettes to make them feel alien. Is that a polo or a dress? A camel coat or a tank top? The answer wasn't always clear, or to put it more exactly, the answer was often: It's both. You could read this rejection of binaries as a political stance, at a moment when the transgender rights movement is picking up steam.Or you could just appreciate the clothes, which Oliver said was his primary intention here. His focus on wardrobe staples provided him an opportunity to fill his collection with relatively commercial pieces, like the pleated button-downs or the tailored black wool overcoats detailed with buckles and zips. Even Oliver's more challenging silhouettes were accessible: Perhaps the key item on the HBA runway today was the wide-leg pleated pants, worn either full-volume or buckled in various ways to adapt the shape. It was a cool idea and well-executed. Likewise, the jeans that extended over the foot to create the look of a denim boot, and the wool and puffer hybrids. Occasionally, Oliver's taste for theatrics got the better of him—a halter-neck fur, for instance, came across as rather unsubtle point-making, out of step with the nuance of much of the rest of the collection. In general, though, this show proved that Oliver—with the aid of his HBA entourage—is getting very good at distilling his keen and playful intellect into viable looks. They get his point across just fine. He can afford to stop hammering it home.
15 February 2015
Editor's note: This season the Hood by Air collection will be presented in three parts. Each is reviewed separately below.Part 1, New York, September 7, 2014Best to address the elephant in the room. What was up with those Plexi stockade chokers at today's Hood by Air show? Given the recent events in Ferguson, Mo., it was hard not to read a political critique into these accessories, which manacled several models' hands up by their heads. Hard, but not impossible, because if you know HBA honcho Shayne Oliver even a little, you know he's more interested in self-expression as a means of challenging norms than he is in conventional forms of protest. Institutional oppression isn't his thing. So it wasn't a total surprise that Oliver pointed to the chokers in his show—and the gussied-up crutches—as part of a commentary on the breakdown of machismo. A key theme of this show, he explained, was an interrogation of what it means to be a man. Hence the deconstructed blazers and fatigues, the riff on the three-piece suit, the very on-trend and very appealing reinterpretations of traditional shirting, for both girls and boys. And for people who refuse to identify with any one particular gender. Thiswasa Hood by Air show, after all.The chokers were arresting, but the most interesting thing on the Hood by Air catwalk today was the emphasis on relatable, wearable clothes. Hood by Air was a finalist for the LVMH prize, and Oliver noted that the experience shaped his thinking about what it means to be a brand; he was galvanized to approach his collections somewhat less as a challenge to push himself as a creator and a great deal more as a chance to entice people into his world. Merely thinking that way would represent a leap forward, but Oliver had the goods right on the runway. This season's denim was pretty much an engraved invitation to join the cult of HBA—the jeans came distressed, painted, zippered, and, in a standout version, shredded to within an inch of their lives and emblazoned with the "HBA" logo over the kneecaps. The aforementioned shirting ought to make the brand some new friends, too, as will those "HBA"-embossed black leather bombers. Indeed, for this reviewer's money, the nerviest move at the show wasn't the moment Boychild sallied down the runway in a choker with a giant dog. It was when Oliver sent four models in a row out in identical looks: black embossed bombers and "HBA"-logoed black jeans.
Again? Another one? One more? That's exactly how it will feel when you start to see this look everywhere on the street.
23 September 2014
There's no question that Shayne Oliver uses the Hood by Air runway to make statements—about gender, about power, about class, about beauty. And more. But it's also true that he's trying to sell clothes. Talking to Oliver, one doesn't get the impression that commerce is uppermost in his mind. But among the many interesting things about today's Hood by Air show was that sound ofka-chingyou could just make out amid the bombastic soundtrack. Oversize football jerseys with a magnified bruise print?Ka-ching. Grommeted suede and leather bombers?Ka-ching. HBA zip-embellished jeans?Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. The denim in particular seems like it will have a very short trajectory from cult must-have to mainstream phenomenon. Oliver seems to get the appeal: In a perfect mash-up of art and commerce, he concluded the show with an extraordinary performance, as about a dozen muscular young menall in Hood by Air denimtook to the runway for a vogueing extravaganza (although this was such an athletic, aggressive style of vogueing, it probably deserves another name). The dancing was unforgettable. So were the jeans.
9 February 2014
There's no question that Shayne Oliver uses the Hood by Air runway to make statements—about gender, about power, about class, about beauty. And more. But it's also true that he's trying to sell clothes. Talking to Oliver, one doesn't get the impression that commerce is uppermost in his mind. But among the many interesting things about today's Hood by Air show was that sound ofka-chingyou could just make out amid the bombastic soundtrack. Oversize football jerseys with a magnified bruise print?Ka-ching. Grommeted suede and leather bombers?Ka-ching. HBA zip-embellished jeans?Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. The denim in particular seems like it will have a very short trajectory from cult must-have to mainstream phenomenon. Oliver seems to get the appeal: In a perfect mash-up of art and commerce, he concluded the show with an extraordinary performance, as about a dozen muscular young menall in Hood by Air denimtook to the runway for a vogueing extravaganza (although this was such an athletic, aggressive style of vogueing, it probably deserves another name). The dancing was unforgettable. So were the jeans.
8 February 2014
Is Hood by Air the most exciting young brand in New York? It's certainly the most out-of-the-box and compelling. All it took was a glance around the crowd at the HBA show today to affirm that budding maestro Shayne Oliver is speaking a different fashion dialect than any other designer putting clothes on a catwalk right now. Perhaps the best way to describe what Oliver is up to is to say that he's elevating streetwear into fashion, rather than merely absorbing it as a reference.Most of the industry folks in attendance at today's show were probably expecting to see a lot of bulky sweatshirts and tees. What they got, though, was fashion, and of an acutely thoughtful variety. Oliver took on some big ideas here. There were many-zippered looks that could be adapted in both fit and functionality. There were Hollywood-inspired graphics commenting on American naïveté. There was an effort—very sincere—not just to gender-bend with the clothes, but to void gender categories entirely. And most dramatically, there were the looks inspired by Chinese paratrooper uniforms, which featured spinelike braids and tubular quilting that gave the pieces a menacing quality. Shayne Oliver has got a lot on his mind, plainly. The hype is well deserved.
7 September 2013