Hood By Air’s Shayne Oliver always has a cool cast of characters on his runway. Electronic musician Arca has walked the show, and performance artist Boychild is a presence each and every season, usually wearing the wildest look in the collection. But today, for HBA’s Fall 2016 show, there was a transfixing mystery man in the lineup dressed in little more than a pair of black leather pants and holding aloft one of the collection’s standout coats—an oversize North Face–inspired puffer that was so big it looked like a sleeping bag. So who was this shirtless guy with the cool tats? Radical Russian artist Slava Mogutin.
Mogutin is no stranger to shirtless-ness. As a photographer and multimedia artist who’s now based in New York City, he’s exhibited in galleries and magazines such as BUTT and i-D, and a free-love, pro-LGBTQ approach to nudity and sex have long been integral parts of his work. But his importance in the show is more than skin deep, and his biography lends an interesting new layer to the collection. According to Mogutin’s official website, he was a gay activist and artist in Russia facing condemnation from the country’s conservative government. He tried to register a gay marriage back in 1994 long before it was even possible in the States, let alone the former USSR. Mogutin fled his country in 1995, and claims to have been the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the U.S. on the grounds of homophobic persecution.
So what does this have to do with fashion? Oliver has long been a champion of the kind of queer politics that Mogutin preaches in his artwork, but seemed to have other pressing global issues on his mind, too. The refugee crisis was a focal point at the Yeezy presentation at Madison Square Garden last week, but Oliver addressed the topic with far more subtlety, outfitting his models in sturdy rubber boots and tent-like overcoats that seemed built for an epic journey of which the destination is unknown. Wherever Oliver was headed with his vision this season, it’s clear that Mogutin, who gives voice to the asylum-seeker experience, has arrived.
Watch the Hood By Air Fall 2016 ready-to-wear show:
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