Hood By Air's long awaited return

The announcement, a few days ago, of the return of Hood By Air, the brand founded in 2006 in New York by Shayne Oliver and Raul Lopez, that three years ago had officially retired, was welcomed with great enthusiasm. Although the news is not entirely surprising - Oliver had spoken of a possible return of the brand a few months ago -, the decision to revive the brand today makes perfect sense. 

Tracing the history of Hood By Air, it is inevitable not to notice how the brand has been a forerunner, of trends and obsessions of the industry, of how Oliver was a pioneer who opened the doors to designers such as Virgil Abloh and Kanye West, and to what extent that same brand had already invented and brought on the catwalk an idea of luxury streetwear that has found its maximum expression over the last few years. 

The birth of luxury streetwear

Born in the early 2000s in the New York creative and queer scene, Hood By Air was a melting pot of different styles, inspirations and aesthetics, a faithful reflection of the liveliness of the city, an experience similar to that brought to success in recent years by Telfar Clemens who has always acknowledge Oliver's influence on his career. Oliver's brand consisted of two different lines: Hood By Air, the 'high' collection, the one presented on the NYFW catwalks and sold by retailers of the calibre of Barney's; and HBA, the more casual line, beloved for the 90s-inspired T-shirts and denim basics, sold instead by stores such as VFiles. From this distinction, in a bipolarity of styles and price tags, it emerges clearly the brand's intuition to position itself on two different markets, distant, but actually complementary, which in recent years have ended up blending with each other. 

That unique mix of different personalities, inspirations and backgrounds that made New York a unique city was portrayed also on the catwalks and in the brand's disruptive and innovative campaigns, which featured a multi-ethnic and gender-fluid cast. In fact, what Hood By Air did ten years ago is what fashion plans to do today to make the industry more inclusive. Oliver brought a meme, surreal fashion made of unusual, unforgettable clothes and items to the catwalk, ending up being one of the major inspirations of Demna Gvasalia. The strength and reason for the success of HBA lie precisely in the elevation of the T-shirt from an item symbol of street culture to a cross-sectional piece, becoming an absolute staple, a symbol of a streetwear aesthetic that soon crossed its limits to enter luxury fashion houses. Oliver himself returned to work on the concept of a T-shirt during his year as a resident designer for Helmut Lang, a brand relaunched in recent years thanks to graphic tees, which have opened it to a new, wide audience.  

The retail issue 

Although the brand has always proved to be cutting-edge, even too far ahead of its time, the management and financial aspect of the brand has remained tied to an old and outdated business and sales model, not only not suitable for the type of product that Hood By Air proposed, but also very distant from practices, such as the drop system, already adopted by brands of the time, in particular in the streetwear sector. The result of a very American conception of fashion, Hood By Air saw in the distribution of its garments in department stores such as Barney's New York and Neiman Marcus the only possible option, fossilizing itself in an outdated model, distant from the public to which the brand aimed and ultimately harmful to the brand's future. 

Hood By Air was the result of the work of a collective of young creatives without real marketing experience, but Oliver has always proudly claimed the decision to keep his brand-independent, detached from large conglomerates and luxury groups. In 2016, just before the brand placed pause, the New Guards Group had decided to offer its support to the brand, but the partnership lasted just a year. In addition, Oliver had made a name for himself as a difficult designer to work with, but according to the vision of the same creative, the industry has always found it difficult, if not impossible, to accept a black, queer, opinionated designer, and without a classic formation. A contradiction in terms well highlighted by two of the biggest industry awards taken home by Hood By Air - the LVMH Prize in 2014 and the CFDA Award the following year. Oliver has never hidden his feelings towards the fashion industry, in particular the American one, ready to reward independent designers, but totally unable to support small businesses on a structural level, a controversy rekindled even in recent weeks following the Black protests Lives Matter. 

The new Hood By Air 

The SS16 show of the brand, for the first time, staged in Paris, had represented the highest point in the history of the brand, and of Oliver's creativity. A year later, a few days after what was supposed to be the second, spectacular fashion show of the brand in the French fashion capital, the event was unexpectedly cancelled, followed closely by the announcement of the start of a stop period for the brand. 

In these three years, Oliver has continued to collaborate with important brands, from Colmar to Diesel, to the aforementioned Helmut Lang. Oliver has joined forces once again with the partners that contributed to the success of Hood By Air, Ian Isiah and Akeem Smith, and is now ready to relaunch the brand, which will consist of four different chapters. Hood By Air will be the heart of the project, the name under which products, collections and events will be presented; HBA will be a direct-to-consumer platform with specific customer experiences linked to an annual theme; Museum will instead be the section dedicated to the brand's archival pieces; while Anonymous Club will take care of the promotion of new talents, through a digital community. The project foresees a revolution of its entire business model, placing unprecedented attention towards the consumer and promoting the collaboration with guest designers who will be selected to reinterpret the brand's most iconic items. 

After a three-year hiatus, the return of Hood By Air was celebrated with the launch of a capsule collection of T-shirts, part of the beneficial Uprising project, an initiative through which the brand wants to offer support to marginalized communities.