35 Spyplane Icons

Design excellence of the contemporary slapper era

May 13, 2025

Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.

Our Spring Shorts Report is here.

Check our Ultimate Spyplane Guides to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, Naoshima, Teshima & more.

We marked the Five Year Anniversary of Blackbird Spyplane last week.

Today? We’re celebrating some of the foremost design talents and pinnacle slapper achievements of the last 5 years — a period future scholars might refer to as “The Early Spyplane Era.”

If TIME did an issue saluting the most iconic industrial designs of the 20th century, they’d likely include the Coca-Cola bottle… Dieter Rams’s Braun SK5 turntable… Jony Ive’s iMac… If TIME saluted the most iconic garment designs of the 20th century, you’d probably see the Levi’s Type II trucker… Stan Rays… the Barbour Beaufort… Nike Air Force 1s… the Carhartt Detroit…

In that spirit, we’re saluting 35 Iconic Creations of the Early Spyplane Era: Epoch-defining achievements from designers and lines who’ve freaked it with distinction during the past five years.

In some cases, the creations existed previously, but truly hit during the E.S.E. — and there’s a couple crucial garment-adjacent triumphs woven in, too.

The list is numbered, but not ordered. You might prefer reading it in a browser. If you’re on desktop, use the horizontal bars on the left side of your screen to toggle quickly between all 35.

Read the web version

Let’s get to it —

1. “Your Ego Is Not Your Amigo” tee by Online Ceramics

For a few years there, Elijah Funk and Alix Ross had a gentle, nurturing chokehold on the graphic-tee game. They extrapolated on a long and beautiful history of fan-made Grateful Dead merch, inspiring kindness, ego death, and legions of all-tie-dye-everything imitators in the process. And no design captures the spirit of the whole project for us quite like this one.

Read our interview with Online Ceramics here.

2. The Swoop Jacket by Henry’s

Self-taught patternmaker, cutter & sewer Keith Henry broke through in the late 2010s with his roomy-cut dark-denim jeans. As he expanded into other garments, the Swoop Jacket cemented his place in our small-maker pantheon. The design was “loosely derived from an vintage Canadian Hydro parka,” says Keith, who still makes ~everything himself in Toronto. “I wanted something that emulated the swooping nature of those big front pockets and could store more than the average hand pocket could.” The result is succinctly realized, instantly recognizable, hardbody and graceful all at the same time.

Read our interview with Keith Henry here.

3. Camion Boots by Our Legacy

A cleaned-up, hyper-versatile riff on an early ‘00s Margiela motorcyle boot, from the Stockholm legends. Ubiquitous on the feet of Mach 3+ clothes-rockers for several years now, for good reason.

Read our interview with Jockum from Our Legacy here.

4. Shrits bootleg artist caps by Andrew Kuo

Andrew is a downtown NYC legend, fine artist, graphic designer, basketball podcaster (as one half of Cookies Hoops), and both a connoisseur and expert practitioner of the bootlegging arts. He’s made tons of cheeky bootlegs we love, especially his fictitious “merch” for titans of modern art.

Read our interview with Andrew Kuo here.

5. The P4 “Wide Pants” by Man-tle

How wide is too wide? How big is too big? Is it time to reel things in? These are the vexing questions facing the Mach 3+ pants enthusiast circa 2025. And so — while choosing just one piece from Aida Kim’s and Larz Harry’s consistently excellent Perth, Australia, line is difficult (their bucket hats, C3 caps and D3 jackets are particularly great, too) — their just-right Pant 4 a.k.a. P4 Wide Pants get top honors as a versatile, hard-wearing, roomy-but-not-engulfing solution to no shortage of swag lords’ pants puzzles. Extra props if you get the waxed-cotton version in the deep purple-brown shade Man-tle calls “Earth.”

6. The Big Pocket Jacket by Oliver Church

We have a special place in our hearts for people like Paris-based Kiwi and Big Homie Spyfriend Oliver Church. He’s a gifted craftsman who, after years designing for other labels, including Casey Casey, struck out on his own. Oliver designs, cuts and sews every workwear-inflected piece he sells himself, using deadstock cottons and linens from Paris Fleas. The finishes are top-notch, the hand-sewn buttonholes are charmers — and nothing expresses it all quite like his Big Pocket Jacket. “I really enjoy finding a vintage work jacket that on first look seems industrial, but then you notice half the piece is sewn by hand. I think this embodies that,” Oliver says. “It’s an amalgamation of more than a decade researching and referencing workwear.” Spyfriend Samer Saliba’s beautiful example is above, photographed by Chris Fenimore.

Read our interview with Oliver Church here.

7. African Country Cloth Shirt by Bode

The first thing I ever bought from Emily Bode — back in Spring 2019, via San Francisco’s sadly defunct Maas & Stacks — was a short-sleeved Bowling Shirt cut from old indigo-dyed African cotton. Emily founded her namesake NYC menswear line just 3 years earlier, working out of a Chinatown studio, and at this point all her pieces were still one-of-ones, cut from unexpectedly repurposed vintage fabrics. She didn’t literally invent the 2020-era “upcycling” craze, but spiritually speaking, she absolutely did. You can still feel some of the hand-hewn, entrancingly funky DNA of these early pieces in Bode’s best work today, even as the line’s gone supernova.

Read our interview with Emily Bode here.

8. Links Tote by SC103

And just when you feared “upcycling” might become a torched cliché, the NYC duo of Sophie Andes-Gascon and Claire McKinney came along. SC103 make ingenious home-sewn originals out of leftover and vintage materials, like their signature one-of-a-kind links bags woven together by hand from leather offcuts. Since I first spotted the links ~4 years ago, I’ve become a dedicated fan of their ready-to-wear — including recently launched men’s pieces. They’ve become conduits for the same kind of energy that downtown New York designer-artists like Susan Cianciolo and Miguel Androver tapped in the ‘90s. We love to see them shining at the intersection of art school and Auntwave.

9. Wanderer sneakers by Tarvas

Let’s establish right here that our celebration of “Spyplane Modern Icons” is not some exercise in backward-looking nostalgia. These shoes are brilliant, and they aren’t even out yet. From Helsinki-based walking-shoe wizards Tarvas, a phenomenal Vibram-soled, low-profile, elegantly category-scrambling GORPY slipper-sneaker… Seen from one angle you might think of approach shoes. From another, ‘90s Prada Sport. I’ve been wearing a pair for the past few weeks, because we’re working with Tarvas and the Spyfriends at Nitty Gritty on a collaborative version. And that’s all we can say for now.

10. Pollex Crocs by Salehe Bembury

Over the past decade, everyone gradually agreed that once-maligned Crocs were dope. During the same period, lots of brands went crazy for injection-molded EVA footwear, which, much like monobloc lawn chairs, cost little to mass-manufacture. That allowed brands like Prada, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta to reap insane margins from their putatively “luxury” versions. Less exorbitantly, Merrell put out the Hydro-Mocs, Yeezy put out the Foam Runners, and Hoka put out the Ora Mule. Against this crowded plastic field, Spyfriend Salehe Bembury put out the most memorable of them all: a wild, biomorphic, uncanny and transfixing twist on the signature Croc clog, dubbed the Pollex, that split the difference between utilitarian practicality and a fever-dream flight of fancy.

Read our interview with Salehe Bembury here.

11. Sunset Pile Yak Wool & Cotton Fleece by Cottle

GORP is strong in the Spyplane DNA, so when we first caught wind of Cottle’s yak-and-supima cotton Sunset Pile fleece back in 2020 — as original an “elevated” take on the style as we’ve ever seen — we flipped for it. Cottle just put it out in a blend of yak wool and color-grown (i.e. undyed) Sally Fox cotton, and we flipped all over again.

12. Wool Zip Fleece by Rier

You thought we were only gonna include one artisan wool fleece? Rier’s Austrian-made pullover became a flashpoint of debate last year (among a certain swath of the slapper-appreciating world anyway), because it costs a lot while cursorily resembling something that “shouldn’t” cost a lot, i.e. a regs performance fleece. This helped turned it into a shorthand for a certain kind of menswear-victim mindset fully untethered from reality and good sense. But the fleece itself is far from some empty status-symbolizing signifier. The Tyrolean sheep’s wool is lovely, the colors are fantastic, and the cropped, ballooning cut with the plungingly deep zip is like no other.

13. Hand-pleated Chiffon Top by Julia Heuer

It’s hard to say what drew me (Erin) in first — Julia Heuer’s pleats, or her prints, both created by hand in her Paris studio. The pleats are done shibori-style (rolled into tubes and baked) which creates soft, undulating curves that Julia likes to play up with springy, exaggerated volumes. Each print, meanwhile, starts as an analog artwork, which Julia then digitally manipulates, creating patterns at once beautiful and uncanny. All of her pieces are as fun to wear as they are to look at, but her semi-sheer chiffon long-sleeve tees have become a staple of my closet for their joyful versatility: I’ve worn them to cocktail parties, and also on hikes.

Read our interview with Julia Heuer here.

14. The Replica Jacket by James Coward

If someone said to me, “Jonah, why does Blackbird Spyplane love the minimalist clothes of Vancouver trio James Coward so much — and please, answer with an image?” I would send them the picture above. That’s their Replica jacket in an exquisitely flambéed heavy black Belgian linen. The clothes we love most at the Plane look better with time and thrashing, but this takes it to another level, and highlights the fundamental sturdiness and sharpness of the design itself. “We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; what interests us the most is reframing an old idea in a new way,” designer Dan Garrod says. “The body is cropped, and the sleeve shape is reminiscent of a well-worn midcentury moleskin work jacket that’s been bowed through heavy use. The form and construction are quite simple, which lets the fabric and details do most of the talking.”

15. The Curved Hem Shirt by Dana Lee Brown

Based on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, Dana Lee imposes some intense contraints on herself: All of her clothes are cut & sewn in North America, from fabrics grown, spun, woven, and finished in North America, too. It’s the epitome of Slow Clothes Mindset, and it’s a hard way to work. None of that would matter much if Dana didn’t have great taste in silhouettes, styles and colors, too, honed over decades in the business. Her signature DLB pieces are deceptively simple basics: roomy pull-on pants; double-faced sweatshirts (wool inside, cotton outside); and this sneaky, quiet triumph. It’s her take on a classic oxford-stripe button up, relaxed just so in its proportions, sturdy enough in weight to do overshirt duty, and soft as it gets, thanks to the naturally brown FoxFibre® cotton.

Read our interview with Dana Lee here.

16. Two Pleat Pants by Evan Kinori

Over the past 5 years, pants got big, and then they got even bigger. I wrote an entire New York Times Magazine cover story about it last spring — a smash-hit piece that several million readers enjoyed, because pants matter deeply to all kinds of people. San Francisco designer Evan Kinori embodies much of what we care about most at Blackbird Spyplane: a deep appreciation of craft in the fabrics he uses and the garments he designs; a clear-eyed “systems-level” view of the cursed contemporary apparel industry, and an aversion to doing Business as Usual within that system; a reverence for the natural world; and, last but not least, an eye for great pants. His Two Pleat cut debuted a couple years ago. It’s the widest and most beautiful trouser he makes, audaciously big, yet finely balanced.

Read our interview with Evan Kinori here.

17. Wool Max Canvas High Neck Zip Blouson by Auralee

We’ve been raving about Tokyo’s Auralee for years, but their killer SS25 runway show was a clear turning point. (Your personal correspondent, Standing Room Spyplane himself, was there.) They’re known best for their sophisticated materials development, spot-on color palettes, and sublime styling — that is, for their whole gestalt, more than any one “hero” piece. But I have a hero in mind all the same, from that pivotal SS25 collection: Their cleaned-up (no epaulets, thank God) demilitarized take on an M65 Field Jacket, cut from a technical, Super 120s wool canvas in several colors, prominent among them a bold red hue we’ve been championing since 2021.

Also when we met designer Ryota Iwai in Tokyo earlier this year he was very cool.

18. The Shrunken Track Jacket by Martine Rose

When we think of London menswear designer Martine Rose — who, in addition to her namesake line, put in time at Balenciaga designing under Demna — we keep coming back to her track jackets. Season in, season out, Rose riffs on the form with wit and audacity. We were tempted to select her Western-style tasseled take, but decided on the recurring, constantly morphing Shrunken Track Jacket, instead, which strikes a handsome, physics-defying compromise between oversized (rounded shoulders, ballooning arms) and fitted (cropped and close-cleaving at the waist). An unbeatable example of the S.T.R.R.O.N.G.G. — Soviet Techno Racing Raver Orbital Neo-Gorp Gymnast — aesthetic. Plus her Nike Shox collabs were fire.

19. MP-103 Field Pants by Earth \ Studies

We’ve been writing about this innovative Portland post-GORP label since their very first drop, back when they went by a different name. I’ve been wearing and loving these handsome, asymmetrical, highly functional pants out on the trails for just as long.

20. Worn by Sofi Thanhauser

Published in 2023, a sweeping, sharp, richly illuminating “People’s History” of what is so beautiful about clothes, and what’s so cursed about their production at industrial scale. Heavy stuff, but in Thanhauser’s hands it’s fleet and fascinating. Dylan Lewis from the Brooklyn label Never Cursed told us we had to read this, and we’re deeply grateful that he did. The only book we’re putting on this list, because it contextualizes every other garment we’re celebrating.

Find it at your local library, or at Bookshop here.

21. FoxFibre® color-grown organic cotton by Sally Fox

Decades ago, cotton breeder and Spyplane hero Sally Fox cultivated a radiant, organic, color-grown cotton with pre-modern roots, whose fibers were long enough that they could be spun by modern machinery. To put it more plainly: The colors you see above are naturally occurring. There is no dye. The resulting fabrics are “eco,” and just as importantly, they’re soft, strong & beautiful. Sally had a huge moment selling FoxFibre® cotton to big brands in the ‘90s, and then a few forces, NAFTA among them, ended that. But she never stopped working, and now a new generation of small makers has embraced her work and carried it forward.

Read about our visit to Sally Fox’s Northern California cotton nursery here.

22. Personalized hand-drawn customs by Small Talk Studio

No account of Nick Williams’s and Phil Ayers’s vibrant, adventurous & popping NYC clothing line is complete without these funky treasures, which sparked it all off.

23. Adidas Sambas by Grace Wales Bonner

The first Samba came out in 1949. Astonishingly, it’s remained a staple slapper ever since. But in Fall 2020, the UK’s Grace Wales Bonner dropped her first collaboration with Adidas, featuring an artisan-vibed take on the shoe — whipstitched tongues, lace-doily stripes. She helped usher in an enormous Sambaissance, and a craze for slim-soled footwear generally, that still hasn’t subsided.

24. Twisted Pants by Lemaire

The signature jeans from Paris’s reigning Pants Masters. Christophe Lemaire, Sarah-Linh Tran, and their team are some of the best in the game, across all categories — and they’re prolific to boot. But no piece has distilled it all, and struck so deep a chord, as these.

25. Uneeks by Keen

Erin and I have been drawn towards what we call “Ugly Genius” our whole lives. Our essay about Ugly Genius is a contemporary masterpiece of aesthetic philosophy. But when I insisted on copping a pair of Keen Uneeks with a neoprene bootie insert back in 2015, even Erin gave them a triple take. By the time Blackbird Spyplane existed, she’d long since come around, and more and more Mach 3+ clothes appreciators were f--king with Uneeks, too. Gorpy, crunchy, hideous, ingenious, swag, dorky, all in perfect tension.

26. The Chef Pant by Meals

Big, fun, genderless, elastic-waisted, low-pocketed, sedately colored except when they’re brightly colored, cotton canvas, linen, sturdy, relatively inexpensive, and thoroughly inescapable landmarks of the Mach 3+ 2020s wardrobe writ large. Designed, cut, sewn, and dyed within a 6-mile radius in L.A. Meals co-founder Sam Salad is a longtime Spyfriend to boot.

27. Vintage 1/2-Zip Sweatshirt by A. Presse

The best piece from the buzziest new Japanese label of the past ~year is one of the most seemingly basic — until you pull one on and realize that, from the cut to the cloth to the antiqued Waldes zipper, it’s anything but.

28. The Wave Rider 10 by Mizuno

The style of running shoe we now call Silver Slappers was born in the Y2K era — and unanimously regarded as 100% uncool at the time. But in November 2021, we boldly announced that “Wack Silver Sneakers are Fire,” and helped to usher in a cyborg-raver-nurse-footwear renaissance. There’s a few pillars of the style, from Asics, Brooks, and New Balance. But for our money the Mizuno Wave Rider 10s are the best of the bunch.

29. Mulholland Dr. tee by And After That

Spyfriend Edgar Gonzelaz started And After That as a way to raise money for his brother’s Dream Act application, expanded it into a mutual-aid fundraising operation, then became a bona fide brand, devising caps and tees, originals and bootlegs alike, rocked by Zendaya, Post Malone, Hunter Schaeffer and us, among other cultural luminaries. I’ve always had a soft spot for Edgar’s David Lynch tributes — I own his FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION LAURA DERN cap. But this “Polaroid” tribute tee, with the director’s old Mulholland Dr. projectionist’s note on the verso, takes the cake. It’s only more meaningful now that Lynch is gone.

30. Open Lace sneakers by Stòffa

NYC’s Stòffa specialize in sumptuous, made-to-measure men’s tailoring, cut from gorgeous fabrics — and priced accordingly. There is no better introduction to designer Agyesh Madan’s craft and ingenuity, though, than the genderless Open Lace sneaker, where a ghillie-ish upper rests on a thin natural-latex sole for a clean, crisp “Dogs on Dainty” instant classic. Based on shoes Agyesh wore growing up in India, and modeled above by Erin, who interviewed him about them here.

31. Macworld ‘92 Fractal Tee by Robert Azank

We rode hard for vintage computer-themed promo tees in Spyplane Year One. We rounded up swag old Apple joints in May 2020 here, then saluted “Pentium Chip Drip” in June 2020 here. We thought long and hard about which tee to choose as the icon for all the above. We lingered over the iMac G4 Cube tee that Hokanobunobu (R.I.P.) is wearing in that Apple sletter. We thought about my beloved embroidered-logo black Jobsian iMovie mockneck. But then we remembered that vibey fractals are very tight, and the choice was clear.

You can read our interview with the artist who designed it, Robert Azank, here.

32. Pickers Jacket by Unkruid

Unkruid is the most exciting new line in the Artisan Slapper scene — Erin wrote about them last summer, before anyone else, after their clothes knocked her socks off during a visit to Philadelphia’s Rennes. These days, the mere mention of Unkruid’s name (or your best approximation, if your Flemish [?] pronunciation isn’t what it should be) will make a certain type of Mach 5+ clothes enthusiast purr. The Pickers Jacket has a sharp little stand collar and modified raglan sleeves with a gorgeous curve, resolving Unkruid’s relatively more outré impulses with a day-in, day-out rockability. Bonus points if you go for the red-and-white kelsch cloth, on its Swag Picnic Blanket a.k.a. Elevated Chinese Elder Grocery Bag a.k.a. Italian Red Sauce Chianti Bottle Candlestick “Mamma Mia” Artisan Tablecloth flow.

33. Wrap Coat by Lauren Manoogian

NYC’s Lauren Manoogian, the contemporary knitwear goat, has been making things since 2008. But her softly sculptural knits, designed in collaboration with Chris Fireoved, started resonating more widely than ever in the postpandemic era, because they don’t force you to choose between cozy and put-together, swaddled and sharp: I (Erin) called it “soft armor” in New York Magazine. So much of the Manoogian Look is about layering knits upon knits — swathes on swathes on swathes — and this wrap coat, whose collar becomes a scarf, embodies that.

34. Striped button-up shirts by Mfpen

A couple years ago people started going cuckoo for what you might call Y2K Officecore — thanks in no small part to Denmark’s Mfpen, whose unisex striped button ups, often cut from deadstock cotton poplins, scrambled the borders between 2002 and 2022, between banker drones and Scando dirtbags, between “going out” formalwear and thrift-shop skate style.

35. The Purple Earth Swagtooth Lows by Obōz x Blackbird Spyplane

We helped make the best shoe of the decade, in a deeply pleasing color combination that other people are only starting to copy. Five of the world’s best shops carried them, and they sold out in 2 minutes at the Obōz site. This list wouldn’t be complete without them!

In addition to the people above, we gotta drape garlands of praise upon some other Early Spyplane Era icon-crafters — especially, but non-exhaustively:

11.11, 18 East, A-Cold-Wall*, And Wander, Aviva Jifei Xue, Boboutic, Body of Work, Camiel Fortgens, Casey Casey, Cawley, Chelsea Mak, Cristaseya, Collina Strada, Comoli, Connor McKnight, Dauan Jacari, Denim Tears, Eckhaus Latta, Eleph, Faces of Another, Gnuhr, Graphpaper, Graziano & Gutiérrez, Greg Laboratory, Kaptain Sunshine, KasMaria, Kartik Research, Kiko Kostadinov, Lady White Co., La Sportiva, Liv Ryan, Margaret Howell, Merrell, Monad, New Balance, Never Cursed, Nicholas Daley, Nicole McLaughlin, Nomia, Older Brother, OrSlow, Post Imperial, Rachel Comey, Real McCoys, Reproduction of Found, Roa, Sandy Liang, Scarpa, S.K. Manor Hill, Sono, Stein, Story Mfg., Studio Nicholson, Stüssy, Taiga Takahashi (R.I.P.), Tender, Tezomeya, Wanze Song, Willy Chavarria, William Frederick, Yoko Sakamoto, and Xenia Telunts 😮‍💨.

If your wardrobe consists of garments from any of the above, plus some vintage Y’s, Gap, Mountainsmith and Levi’s mixed in? You are saucing Spyplanishly to a world-beautifying degree.

Arguments are inevitable when it comes to anything resembling canon-building. Come build with us: Are there icons in your pantheon that we didn’t include here? Shout them out in the comments.

Jonah & Erin