Shayne Oliver keeps on teasing the fashion industry with his next, creative steps. Since announcing the relaunch of Hood by Air in 2020, the designer has been teasing a number of projects: first was “Prologue,” the HBA capsule modeled by Naomi Campbell; then came a preview of his eponymous ready-to-wear label at New York Fashion Week in February of last year, followed by Anonymous Club, the elusive talent incubator he formally introduced last year. Coming soon is an art exhibition in Berlin, where he recently moved. These projects don’t abide by industry schedules. They arrive when Oliver is ready.

A year after its first drop, Oliver is back with the second installment of Anonymous Club, and with it some newfound structure. “I’m working to create more clarity, that’s part of what this campaign is about,” he said. He was referring both to this lookbook, shot at Schinkel Pavillon, which features the designer Stefano Pilati, a Berliner for the last couple of years, and to a campaign the label dropped last week on Instagram, which stars Telfar Clemens, Raul Lopez, and Patia Borja, who also appear in this slideshow as cutouts. “Anonymous Club is about friendship and camaraderie with people that share like-minded ideas,” Oliver said. The lineup itself is a tightly edited collection of staples with the Shayne Oliver twist in a limited color palette consisting of black, beige, and neon green. There’s the pagoda shoulders Oliver often presented at Hood by Air, his usual club-ready leather jackets and trousers, and a run of oversized utility jackets. More interesting are a t-shirt with its shoulders raised to hide the neck but sloped to the regular shoulder apex, and a flared skirt with two jacket sleeves as part of the front drape. To Oliver’s credit, as pervasive as the Hood by Air aesthetic he and Lopez introduced a decade ago is today, his clothes are imbued with a certain authenticity. The show-stealer in this lookbook is a three-headed chihuahua, a reference to Cerberus, the hound of Hades in Greek mythology that guards the gates of the Underworld. Oliver explains it came from a dark place: back in the HBA days, he felt in need of a watchdog to look over ideas and protect the “naive period in the creative process.” He feels similarly about Anonymous Club now. “Sometimes some aspects of things need to be protected for it to blossom into something,” he explained.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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