Hood By Air's long awaited return - Shayne Oliver's brand that gave shape to luxury streetwear as we know it today

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.

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HOOD BY AIR IS A MONUMENT TO YOUTH CULTURE – AN INSTITUTION DEDICATED TO NEW IDEAS, HOUSING AND TRANSFORMING THEM INTO WORKS OF ART AND FASHION. 13-YEARS-AGO YOUNG, BLACK AND POC CREATIVES STARTED HOOD BY AIR, CREATING SOMETHING ENTIRELY UNIQUE IN FASHION. OVER A DECADE LATER, WE CONTINUE TO PRODUCE OBJECTS AND ARTIFACTS THAT TRANSCEND ATTITUDES AND IDEAS IN ORDER TO CHALLENGE WHAT LUXURY MEANS FOR FUTURE AUDIENCES. IN RECENT YEARS WE HAVE SEEN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES DISTANCE THEMSELVES FURTHER AND FURTHER FROM REAL CULTURE. RADICAL WORKS HAVE BEEN PUSHED OUT BY GENTRIFICATION. THE YOUTH HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACES NECESSARY FOR NEW IDEAS TO GROW. THE SYSTEM IS ANTIQUATED, AND WE WANT TO REPLACE IT WITH SOMETHING NEW. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD THAT NEEDS TO BE CREATED. WE’VE DONE IT BEFORE, AND WE’RE DOING IT AGAIN. TODAY, WE INTRODUCE ANONYMOUS CLUB, A VEHICLE TO PROMOTE AND SPONSOR YOUNG TALENT. THESE YOUTHS AND THEIR PROJECTS WILL BECOME A PART OF OUR WORLD, A COMMUNITY WE CALL THE HOOD BY AIR ALUMNI. HOOD BY AIR, THE NEW INSTITUTION.

A post shared by HOOD BY AIR (@hoodbyair) on Jul 13, 2020 at 6:17am PDT

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.

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.