Sneakers going Gaia
Sauced-out skater Beatrice Domond's tree-inspired Vans and deep-cut intel, plus a sick styling trick, handmade raw-silk slappers & more
Blackbird Spyplane back at you !!
FIRST UP — it’s time for a new installment of the intel-rich recurring BBSP feature known as “V.I.P. R.A.D.A.R.,” where Vibey Illustrious People come through with tight bursts of Rare And Dope A** Recon.
Today we’ve got gems from a mad chill & sauced-out skate-world luminary:
Beatrice Domond is a Miami-born skater who lives in NYC. As a kid she emailed clips of herself to tha god William Strobeck, who saw the vision and linked her with Jason Dill of F**king Awesome, who put her on the FA team as a wee youth. In 2014, Strobeck cut footage of Beatrice into his landmark Supreme ‘cherry’ video, and she shows up in 2019’s Strobeck-directed CANDYLAND, too.
Longtime Spyfriends know that skate style fascinates us… When I asked Beatrice for her theory on why skaters have so much more flavor per capita than the average athlete, she replied: “Because it’s a sport and it’s an art. What you’re wearing is part of the skating. It’s like a painting — if you use a lighter red when you should have used a darker red, that painting would have hit more. So someone could do the craziest trick, and if their pants are crap? No one gives a s**t! But when you see someone wearing a denim jacket and they just tre flipped a 9 stair, like, that’s a f**king bad-ass, that’s gnarly. I remember the first time I watched the Propeller video, where he did the stairs and a gate in a denim jacket with a sheep collar and blue jeans. I was like, ‘This dude is gapping out in denim?’ He’s a f**king terror, that’s so sick to me.”
And in a World Spyplane Exclusive we can reveal that next week — on July 13 to be exact — Vans is putting out 2 cool shoes they whipped up with Beatrice: a Skate Style 53 penny loafer and a new silhouette called the Zahba Mid by Beatrice Domond. Both are nubuck, in an earthy hue inspired by “this tree I saw walking around New York while the seasons were changing, and it was half-green, half-brown,” Beatrice explained.
You know we f**k with trees and anyone who takes inspiration from them !! So we were stoked for Beatrice to put us on to 3 off-the-beaten-path slappers:
“I’ve been really into this skate video ‘Genesis’ by Rhythm, from 1997 — that video is how I wanna skate, and how I want my s**t to look. There’s a lot of Switch Mongo in there, which I’m kind of hyped on right now, and also, just the clothes: The shoes that are selling now, the Vans and Cons, are exactly what they’re wearing in this video. You watch it and it highlights, like, we think we’re on new s**t today, but no, we’re on old shit.
“I’ll play videos like this on full screen, in their entirety. I don’t know if many people do that. Nowadays it’s just, like, a gnarly clip, then 2 seconds later someone is selling you lip gloss. I’m like, ‘I need to process that trick, what the f**k!’”
“I’m just about to finish Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act. It’s been taking me a while because some of the things he says you have to take a day or even a week to sit with it. It’s about creativity in general, and how to be more creative, and how — this is my favorite thing in the book — rules are there so you can not follow them. You need rules, and you need to know them, but that’s so you have something to break. That’s how Gonz’ll skate, or like Pontus Alv is a good example — he knew all the tricks, at least the ones he cared about, so why not no comply and wall ride? And then that becomes the rule.”
“I found this really cute café spot called Bakeri in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I was just there. It’s so beautiful, they have a nice backyard, they have a koi pond, and the food is amazing. I honestly haven’t found good baked goods in New York — they’re usually so dry. But this place, the baked goods are on point.”
Beatrice Domond is on Instagram here. Her new Vans come out July 13.
NEXT UP —
Fire Jawns Alert — it’s a “Spyplane Slapper Swarm” featuring
Grail-tier Japan-made striped oversize pocket tees available on U.S. soil from ONE shop,
A sick & easy styling “hack” courtesy of The Row’s SS24 show,
Great new chunes,
And a rare chance to get highly coveted handmade clothes from one of the dopest single-maker labels in the game: