If fashion is about finding the perfect fit, Shayne Oliver has discovered his sartorial soulmate in Berlin. Since October of last year, Oliver traded the brownstones of Brooklyn — where Hood By Air cemented his status as a New York fashion luminary — for the concrete brutalism of the German capital. His new venture, the Shayne Oliver Group, comprised of several sub-labels including a basics line and runway collection, has seen a reclamation of sorts for the designer’s conceptual vision away from the flippant streetwear crowd who turned on HBA as quickly as they adopted it.
As part of Berlin Fashion Week, his primary label, Anonymous Club, unveiled its latest runway presentation, cementing its status as one of the biggest international pulls of the week (not everyone could boast an incognito Kanye West in attendance). Still, beyond the celebrity spotting, the collection dubbed ‘Freudian Glitch: Fantasia 2024’, was a mesmerising return to form for the designer known for refracting streetwear through a surrealist (at times nightmarish) lens.
Traipsing around an arachnid-esque lighting structure in the centre of Berlin’s concrete music hall Tempodrom, models donned Oliver’s quintessential exploration of Terry and jersey streetwear staples. Hoodies, sweatshirts, sweatpants, and shorts branded with Anonymous Club, were reworked into security blankets and hooded veils not dissimilar to religious habits. Setting the scene was an orchestral soundtrack by Billy Bultheel, Total Freedom, and Suutoo that, at times, was cartoonish, and at others harrowing. Screams followed by the serenity of chirping birds played on the collection’s thesis of finding harmony through contradiction.
For Oliver, the collection began with Frued’s psychoanalyst theories regarding the subconscious and finding truth beneath the masks of society. Like the great American auteur David Lynch, Oliver has always looked beyond the facade of the ordinary to discover the unsettling, yet profoundly human elements that lie beneath. This notion was encapsulated by his distorted reimagining of familiar American sportswear, including polos with hunched shoulders creating a disturbingly threatening silhouette and quilted gilets oversized and printed with a Rorschach blot.
With surreal silhouettes and unexpected textures (latex gym shorts evoking extremism and sex) Oliver invites the audience to question the mundane and confront their internalised fears and desires. At the core of Anonymous Club is an aesthetic rooted in a dreamlike state, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.
His fascination with the idea of liminal space is best captured in his reworking of the Mall of America logo into ‘Mall of Anonymous’ stamped on the closing looks. Once the centre of commerce and community, the migration to e-commerce and times of economic recession have left malls in America all but abandoned. A ruin symbolising a changing society and a nostalgic yearning for past glory.
Backstage Oliver told the press that he wanted to find a base outside of fashion’s Big Four. In Berlin, he could create ‘without the pressure to live up to the status quo’. The result? A collection that highlights Oliver’s fearless creativity and redefines the runway as a space for reflective exploration and cultural commentary as much as it is a centre for commerce.
