Behind Hood By Air's Puzzling New Teaser 'THE PROLOGUE'

Is Hood By Air Back for Real?

3 years agoWords By Sarah Osei

This morning, a press release caused us to have a pretty standard reaction: "Hood By Air is back!" Courtesy of Hood By Air itself, the news initially felt like a watershed moment for the culture. But hold on a second, didn't HBA come back before? And before that? But they've never really come back.

After each campaign, teaser, or surprising collection, the cult label would retreat back into seeming hiatus. This makes it feel like the anticipatory buildup is almost the brand's ethos at this point – unless it really is a prequel to what is to come.

This time around, Hood By Air and Anonymous Club dropped a visualizer (fittingly?) titled THE PROLOGUE. Directed by Roger Guardia and featuring music by Anonymous Sound, the experimental short prefaces Hood By Air’s upcoming runway show, and is staged as a paradoxical dystopian prediction for civilization manifested by characters wearing the upcoming collection. THE PROLOGUE visualizer is the first larger video offering and will premiere worldwide in July.

Then last week, in the same vein, Anonymous Club and founding artist LEECH, delivered their Prologue Mixtape which premiered on NTS.

A prologue, essentially, exists to build a foundation for what is to come. But this isn't the first prologue from the streetwear imprint. Back in February, HBA unleashed a PROLOGUE lookbook starring supermodel Naomi Campbell. Subtitled "Mother," the similarly-dystopian campaign inaugurated the brand's return... or so we thought.

However, if THE PROLOGUE's film poster is anything to go by, both drops are part of a five-part narrative arc that started with "Mother," which we could expect to develop in the coming months.

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Together, Hood By Air and the creative studio Anonymous Club have created a visual and sonic framework for what's to come that goes beyond clothes. And as neither is one to do lip service, there's not much else we can do but wait and see where this anticipatory rollout is gonna take us. But in true HBA-style its an impactful – albeit puzzling – approach to streetwear culture that has been otherwise stagnant.