The belts your pants deserve

Holding up pants with panache, creative unblocking techniques & more

Welcome to Concorde — the Blackbird Spyplane “women’s vertical,” except it’s for everyone who is cool.

The Concorde Cute Swag Index, a guide to everything we’ve covered, arranged by category, is here.

City intel for traveling the entire planet is here.

The B.L.I.S.S. List — a comprehensive index of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — is here.

— Erin & Jonah

Concorde, here, envibening your big beautiful brains yet again. In today’s edition we’ve got:

• A great under-the-radar art book that doubles as an object lesson in how to unblock your creativity

• The first women’s jawns from a majorly Spyplane-beloved designer

But first… BELTS!

After our modern classic “Spyplane Slapper Pants Guide” came out in December, a bunch of readers asked about how best way to hold said pants UP —“What belt should I be wearing right now?”

Belts, like jewelry, take up so little space that you can easily keep them on ice when they’re out of the rotation. Store them in your B.I.G. B.U.C.S. (Beautiful Inward-Gazing Blessed Uninterrupted Closed System) Library rather than pump them into your closet every few years only to dump them when the winds change.

I (Erin) keep a tote bag of belts from over the years — studded, skinny, beaded, wide wraps, woven jute, and colorful leather — most of which I either thrifted or got as hand-me-downs from friends & my mother, Mama Concorde herself. Jonah, for his part, tends to lock in 1 simple belt and wear that 1 belt alone for years.

Let’s say you’re building your own B.I.G. B.U.C.S. Belt Holdings from scratch, here in 2024. If you wanna be “on trend” there are a few directions you can go in, and I’ll start with some au courant styles I’m f**king with. Then I’m moving to the main event: My parameters & top picks for gender-agnostic “timeless belts” that are hitting right now but that you can also rock forever & look cool.

Let’s get to it — !