“Is Hood by Air the most exciting young brand in New York?” Ten years ago, minus a few months, Hood by Air put together its very first runway show at New York Fashion Week. Maya Singer posed that question in her review of the upstart label’s spring 2014 men’s collection, eventually answering it herself with her closing line: “the hype is well deserved.”
A decade later, Shayne Oliver is designing a new collection under the label Anonymous Club that is part design collective and part youth culture incubator. Raul Lopez, who cofounded Hood by Air with Oliver, has revitalized his own label Luar with show-stopping runway spectacles and with a new It-bag. Hood by Air may be no more—not like we knew it back then—but its spirit is still all over the runways. Widen the focus and I’d argue that the subversion and out-of-the-box thinking that once characterized HBA has now actually become the norm.
In the early days of HBA, putting streetwear on the runway still qualified as disruptive. But rather than merely referencing them, Hood by Air made street clothes fashionable by reimagining their proportions and fabrications. Polo shirts were draped and extended into dresses, and puffer jackets were hybridized with tailoring. Elsewhere that menswear season, it was all preppy button-down and tailored shorts, but at HBA we saw skirts for everyone and collared shirts as mini dresses. The often reserved, even conservative vision of menswear at the time began to come undone on Oliver’s runway. That this was all shown on streetcast models of different races and gender expressions—many different from the archetype of the model at the time—can’t be overlooked.
“There was an effort—very sincere—not just to gender-bend with the clothes, but to void gender categories entirely,” Singer said in her review of the show. A decade later, as we dive into the spring 2024 menswear season, the skirts and dresses for all genders that HBA sent down its runways have become ubiquitous across “menswear” collections. But more significantly, it’s Hood by Air’s once unique casting that has really left a mark on fashion. From newcomers like Chopova Lowena to stalwarts including Miu Miu and Gucci, brands have adopted the idea of “genderful” casting.
Ten years on, Hood by Air’s legacy is the way it insisted on platforming the under-represented and elevating the subcultural to the mainstream. The lesson for tomorrow: Fashion is at its best when it preserves the authenticity of its references and subjects, and when it includes the very same people in whom it finds inspiration.
