Hood By Air Is Back, and It’s Ready to Radicalize Fashion Again

[SophiaVB]

The renewed Hood By Air kicks into gear on Thursday, with a charity T-shirt drop and the launch of a Cash Card designed by Oliver in partnership with Cash App. (The Cash Card perhaps echoes the American Express card released in 2004 by Alexander McQueen—another of fashion’s most beloved dark princes.) The proceeds from the shirt and card will be donated to organizations that support Black and LGBTQ communities: Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, Emergency Release Fund, and Gays & Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society.

The reformed brand will consist of four “distinct entities,” as the press release describes it, that position Hood By Air as a boundary-pushing collaborative platform that promotes creatives of color and the LGBTQ community. First, Hood By Air proper will set an agenda for each year through an activation or event that launches “collectible fashion products,” the release says. Second, HBA will be a direct-to-consumer brand that will produce clothing outside of fashion’s seasonal, market-driven, wholesale-oriented system. Third, a new concept called MUSEUM will serve as a working archive for the brand’s original collections, which a designer-in-residence (“young BIPOC creatives,” the release specifies) will occasionally reinterpret.

Last, and perhaps most exciting, the brand is introducing something called ANONYMOUS CLUB to cultivate emerging artists, musicians, and businesses that will collaborate with Hood By Air. “There is another world that still needs to be created,” the release reads. “It’s about tearing the old one down while figuring out a way to build a new one up, and in the midst of all of that, amplifying the ideas and conversations that we feel are important. 13-years-ago Hood By Air was birthed out of young, black and POC creatives performing at the highest level. This was the contemporary output because no one else was doing it. Hood By Air resides here to allow risk and be vanguards for where it's going next.” More details on ANONYMOUS CLUB will be announced soon, though an Instagram video teases something gritty and totally freaky.

Hood By Air Is Back, and It’s Ready to Radicalize Fashion

 

[helmutnotdead]

Just what we needed to complete a beautiful 2020. What’s next? Marc closing his brand?

 

[Phuel]

Oh my God— reading through this press release, it’s literally checking off all the trendy identity-politics and virtue-signalling of any given university rally. So insufferable and predictable. This isn’t fashion anymore; it’s a marketing collective seizing the opportunity of and absolutely relying on these politicized days to hustle basics at premium prices to optimum profit. It’s already so transparently cynical and greedily corporate.

 

[RedSmokeRise]

2020 and we’re still “collaborating” with “emerging artists” ??

 

[dior_couture1245]

Kill me now.

 

[YohjiAddict]

God's listened to my prayers!

I have been walking nearly naked without his leather chaps, cutout man-dresses and deconstructed shirts to fill my wardrobe. I'm sure there are others just like me...

 

[bc collector]

"Third, a new concept called MUSEUM will serve as a working archive for the brand’s original collections, which a designer-in-residence (“young BIPOC creatives,” the release specifies) will occasionally reinterpret."

God, who does he think he is? Cristobal Balenciaga?

This is clearly the project of a supermegahyperoverinflated ego.

 

[Lola701]

I’ve never liked HBA because for me, it was the pioneer of « the message bigger than the designs ». I kind of feel some resentment from SO. HBA could have been what Off-White is today...
So, in a way, I want him to succeed. But do we need or miss his stuff in 2020 or after? No!
I remember the mess of his Helmut Lang collection.

I would rather see the guys from Public School come back. They disappeared after their DKNY stint.

 

[dodencebt]

"...another of fashion’s most beloved dark princes."

Is this supposed to imply that both Shayne Oliver and Alexander McQueen are somehow part of the same "fashion's most beloved dark princes" club? The audacity.

 

[Salvatore]

But WHO actually wears this ?

 

[jeanclaude]

"Radicalizing" fashion, one stupid logo t-shirt at a time!

 

[Avonlea]

What the fu_k is hood by air?

gfycat