Hood by Air is known for challenging beauty conventions, and for the line’s spring 2016 menswear show, designer Shayne Oliver created a sparkling mash-up of femme baby-hair accessories and exaggerated orthodontia. Some models wore bling-y padlocked S&M pacifiers, while others wore grills that created the illusion of stretching their mouths into painful-looking toothy grimaces, topped off with silver braces. Oliver’s self-described “infantile glamour” also featured baby barrettes and pigtails, and crystals spelling out words (which we haven’t seen since Karen’s backward “K” in Mean Girls), including “69,” “Icon,” “Toy,” and “Top,” on models’ faces.
Of exploring the tension between comfort, discomfort, and childhood, HBA designer Shayne Oliver told Dazed, “The idea of having to always drink something, it’s like a pacifier in a way — it’s just a comfort thing. We wanted to consider this idea of how when you’re being vocal, you’re being very open. This is a voice, physically you can see it, but this person is trying to say something to you even though they are silent.” It’s a new kind of oral fixation. Though some are likening the beauty look to babycore, we think it goes beyond that — maybe we can call it Rugratscore.