Banger bags, bruv
A rare drop from a one-man artisan bagsmith, stealing tennis valor via fire naff sneakers, archival Yohji intel & more unbeatable recon
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In today’s Plane we’ve got:
A very dope artisan bagsmith — who works at a high level, makes everything himself in London, and whose pieces get snapped up with alacrity — has a new drop of some beautiful multi-purpose waxed-cotton-and-Cordura totes happening today, in an edition of 10.
Rare archival Yohji Yamamoto intel.
I am not a tennisman, but there’s a pair of sick 2021 tennis sneakers that might be too fire to resist… Am I stealing “Court Valor” if I cop?
Let’s get to it —
My father, Papa Spyplane, started playing tennis young. He grew up in Fresh Meadows in Queens, not far from Forest Hills, which was then the home of the U.S. Open. When I was a kid and he was trying to instill his love of tennis in me, he told me about how, circa his late teens, you could just amble onto the courts during the Open with a racket and “hit a bit with the pros, to warm them up before matches.” Apparently he did this once or twice. It doesn’t feel like it could be true, but it’s become a Tale I Cherish, so I’m not calling him up to fact-check it — also, it was the early ‘60s, and they did things differently back then, so maybe it is.
Papa Spyplane’s campaign to turn me into a Real Hitter had mixed results. In my adolescence I was Big Patrick Rafter Gang (Stefan Edberg, too… Agassi of course… I never really f--ked with Pete Sampras). I still love to watch people play tennis: Few things are as enjoyably hypnotic to me as a long, increasingly suspenseful rally. When I was in high school, my dad would go play at a public court operated by the NYC Parks Department — but when he brought me along and tried to teach me to play, too, I wasn’t feeling it, and it didn’t stick.
All of this is on my mind because, a few weeks back, I came across some tennis shoes — contemporary ones, that is, as opposed to, say, Stan Smiths — that look extremely sick to me. There’s a bunch on eBay, I think the design is slamming, and I’ve been circling a pair to rock in non-tennis scenarios.
This shouldn’t be controversial. People famously rock all kinds of sneakers in “unintended” contexts, whether it’s basketball sneakers, in the case of Jordans; running sneakers, in the case of Asics; skate shoes, in the case of Vans; fine Italian driving sneakers, in the case of Prada 2005 Montecarlos (mamma mia)…
… and famously, of course, tennis sneakers, in the case of Stan Smiths.
But Stan Smiths are, crucially, ~50 years old, whereas something about rocking dope but contemporary, Challengers-coded tennies has tripped me up.
This is probably because, over the past few years, tennis has become a surprisingly fraught site of Sauce Semiotics, full of Bandwagon Hoppers and Annoying Class Signaling.
In other words, it’s a perfect topic for some Spyplane Meditation.
First things first, here’s the dope contemporary Challengers-coded tennies in question, with pictures of them both new and cooked, because a big part of the appeal here is how good they look with wear: