In the early 2010’s designer Shayne Olivier took the fashion world by storm. His label Hood By Air was the bellwether of what would eventually become streetwear’s explosion of the luxury fashion landscape. During Olivier’s tenure at the helm of the brand, Hood By Air earned two of fashion’s most coveted awards: LVMH Special Jury Prize in 2014 and CFDA Award in 2015. By most metrics, HBA was the it-brand of the moment. A$AP Rocky walked in their shows, Jaden Smith and Rick Ross sat front row at them, and Rihanna dawned the brand during her 2016 VMA performance. However, suddenly and unexpectedly in the spring of 2017, Olivier announced that he would be taking a break from working on Hood By Air and that the brand would go on an indefinite hiatus.
On Wednesday, Olivier sat down to discuss his reasons for stepping away from the brand and his hopes for its future with fellow designer Kanye West. “I felt like I needed time to learn a bit about myself. That’s really why I took a break,” the designer told West. According to Olivier, by 2017, he felt as if he was making stuff without a real objective in mind. “Am I meant to constantly be working on something without knowing exactly what I’m aiming toward? I didn’t really feel like it was healthy.”
Now, after a two-year hibernation, it appears Olivier is ready to revive the brand. Speaking to Katja Horvat for Ssense, the designer reflected, “people did not fully understand what we were trying to say. So when you don’t understand something, you put it in a box, and with us, we were in the wrong box more so than we were in the right one. So my aim now is to be fully understood.”
