Streetwear brand Hood by Air makes debut at New York Fashion week with appearance by rapper A$AP Rocky

Growing brand Hood by Air made its debut at New York Fashion week on Sunday. According to The Daily Beast, the brand delivered a showing that included conceptual performance art, simian makeup, and an appearance by New York rapper A$AP Rocky. There was also a laser light show developed by performance artist boyCHild which shined down during the show.

The luxury street-wear collection had male models with dilated contact lenses wearing sweatshirts with “HBA” in block lettering, bleached turbans, shorts and boots. Rapper A$AP Rocky ended the performance by appearing in a neoprene zip-up and scrunched-up drop-crotch pants.

During the performance, audience members took to Twitter and Instagram to post on the collection. Notable celebrities and artists were in the show’s front row including rapper Theophilus London, artist Terence Koh, and stylist Nicolas Formichetti who came with his Pomeranian, according to The Daily Beast.

The creator of Hood by Air is 24-year-old fashion designer Shayne Olivier. Olivier started the brand in 2006 by creating a wide array of T-shirts that A$AP Rocky wore. According to The Daily Beast, Olivier dropped out of FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) to focus on his brand and starting designing sweatshirts and ready-to-wear clothes. The brand obtained its first account at the SoHo boutique, Seven New York.

Olivier discussed his brand by stating, “Hood by Air is a play on cultural stigmas.  It’s a play on something [my friends and I] used to call ourselves. People would elaborate on luxury ideas and bring them to the hood, but I felt like we could do the reverse and take the hood to an elevated level.”

Olivier also discussed his new collection by stating, “The concept is all about finding new ways of going through the darkness. It’s inspired by prophets and fetishists, people who push boundaries.”

Hood by Air is definitely pushing against the boundary of what street-wear once was to what it can be.