Like pretty much everyone else with a pulse, Shayne Oliver of avant brand Hood By Air fell in love with Empire and its queen, Cookie Lyon, last winter, when the juicy drama about the Lyon family fighting for control of a music label first premiered on Fox. “Everyone I know was inspired by that show,” Oliver says. “Cookie’s a boss, doesn’t take shit, doesn’t comply with any sort of male rules.” It was, in fact, the voice of Taraji P. Henson in the guise of her signature character that bellowed through the venue’s speakers at HBA’s February show of high-concept puffers and cocky furs—pieces Cookie would have loved—and echoed loudly on the runway soundtrack like a goddess from Olympus. “To use the vocals in the show, it just gave off good energy,” Oliver says. “It means you’re here to rip heads off. Cookie’s the first thing out here in a while that feels punk.”
Oliver’s feelings for Empire turned out to be mutual. Soon after his homage, Hood By Air was asked to make the very first pieces of branded Empire merchandise, debuting here today on Vogue.com and going on sale tomorrow on Hood By Air’s website. The capsule is something of a companion to HBA’s Classics line, but everything has been Empire-icized, with the faces of Cookie and her sons Hakeem and Jamal splashed across HBA’s coveted hoodies and graphic T-shirts. “A lot of it is also references to things I grew up with, that are very specific to Queens,” Oliver says. “All the boys in the oversized Hot 97 Summer Jam tees, all the West Indian girls in the printed Gallianos and Moschinos.” Among the offerings are a few kitschy items that speak to the show’s campier aspects—the sex, the lies, the feuds. There’s a champagne flute for tossing bubbly in an enemy’s face, for instance, and, transformed into a backpack and debuted on the runway at HBA’s most recent show, a re-creation of the pillow that Cookie used to try to suffocate her ex, Lucious. “When we saw that moment, we were literally screaming, like, ‘No, she’s not going to take it there!’ ” Oliver says. “Empire gives you that watercooler moment, the idea of having something that you can be like, ‘Oooh, girl, did you catch that?’ ”
Oliver hung out with the show’s cocreator Lee Daniels, and it was, as they say in showbiz, kismet. “He’s the bomb, really chill,” says Oliver. Things went so well, he says, that there may be a second iteration of the collaboration in the works. And meeting Henson herself, at the June CFDA Fashion Awards, really had him going. “I was all over her,” Oliver says. “We were just feeling fab and drinking champagne. Giggling and kiki-ing.” Henson, he says, calls to mind the brash, bossy icons he grew up loving. “She reminds me of the Dynasty chicks, who have always been a huge reference. Or Lil’ Kim—who came as hard as the guys in this very feminine way. Like, ‘I’m going to give you these hood aesthetics in this really glamorous way.’ I think glamour is coming back!”
And what would he want Cookie (or Henson) to wear from this debut? “The printed bodysuit,” Oliver answers without hesitation. How about the sheer dress, with another of her rallying cries—“I Want What’s Mine”—written boldly on the, ahem, bare chest? “I don’t know if she’d show off all of that,” says Oliver, laughing. “But she probably would! Taraji is full throttle.”
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