Fetish and Fashion
Video of Hood by Air's avant-garde runway show
Shayne Oliver—the designer behind the label Hood by Air—caused a stir with his latest fashion show (held outdoors in Paris) by featuring an army of male models who seemed to be getting ready to invade a post-apocalyptic, gender-bending, S&M-themed dental office. Some models had intricate, full-body tattoos, some sucked on padlock-adorned pacifiers, others sported face-distorting, mouth-revealing “cheek extractors” and all had girlish barrettes tucked into their hair. The show made such an impression that Barneys flagship store in Manhattan painstakingly recreated elements of the event—including 3D-scanning six of the runway models to create mannequin replicas—for its Madison Avenue window display. “I was thinking about the basic idea of pacifiers as fetishizing,” Oliver told the Barneys blog The Window of his inspiration for the show. “The orthodonture comes into play from the idea of holding the mouth open. It has a lot to do with willingness and naivety—always having your mouth open; always being accepting.” Click on the video to see how Oliver’s vision came to life in Paris.
