Biography
Minnesota-born Shayne Oliver is the founder of New York City-based label Hood By Air. He put his brand on hold to focus on a special collection for Helmut Lang, which debuted in September 2017 but announced in February 2019 that the brand would return within a few months. Raised in Trinidad and Brooklyn, he started his cult menswear label in 2006, making sweatshirts and T-shirts for his friends after dropping out of both New York University and Fashion Institute of Technology .
Since then, Oliver has been perfecting a look of his own, incorporating 90s staples like oversized tees, bold logos and graphics, with super premium materials and progressive silhouettes. With its bold 1990s-style graphics, striking silhouettes and high-fashion elements borrowed from the playbooks of Raf Simons and Helmut Lang, Hood By Air has managed to capture the energy of today’s mashed-up youth culture while upending traditional concepts of power, race and gender with a look that is both sensual and tough, androgynous and masculine.
The streetwear thread that runs through his clothes, including the shirts that pun on glamour and cultural obsessions (for Spring/Summer 2012, he created a line of tees that played on the Paramount logo) are favourites at boutiques such as Colette and Opening Ceremony, and include supporters like Kanye West, Rihanna, Ciara, Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky — with the latter closing his FW13 show.
Famous for its “HBA” logo, Hood By Air won the CFDA’s Swarovski Award for Menswear and received international recognition when the brand was awarded special prize winner of the inaugural LVMH Prize in 2014.