When you cop on this level you gotta enter "Acquisition Armistice" mode
A star-studded recon spectacular
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
Enjoy our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to underwear — is here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Real quick —
The other day, Business of Fashion recognized Blackbird Spyplane’s immense powers by inducting us into their illustrious BoF 500 — the “definitive index of people shaping fashion.”
There was a party in Paris with fellow 2024 inductees Ayo Edibiri, Phoebe Philo and Greta Lee, but Erin and I were in California watching horned owls and Cooper’s hawks do their own “red-carpet-step-and-repeats” a.k.a. hop around these majestic redwood branches above these nature trails, baby!
We’re grateful to everyone there for f**king with the Spyplane vision.
Meanwhile —
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
The best things we did / art we looked at / stores we hit / clothes we spent so much on we had to immediately enter “Acquisition Armistice” mode but it was worth it / Spyplane x Obōz launch parties we attended / food we ate / drinks we drank / prestige-TV screenings we popped in on / and more from our packed 5-night Spyplane NYC Mission last week.
Very sick new wide-leg hiking pants from one of our favorite post-GORP lines, which you could rock in all manner of contexts.
Let’s get to it —
We flew to my native NYC soil last week to host a party at Colbo, celebrating the launch of the instant-sellout Blackbird Spyplane x Obōz “Purple Earth Swagtooth Low.” The shoes touched the floor I.R.L. at 5 shops on Monday, hit those shops’ websites on Thursday, and sold out with alacrity. On Friday, Obōz put their stock online. In a wild development, Spyfriends snapped up the entire run in ~2 minutes.
If you got a pair, thank you, wear them well. If you wanted them but weren’t able to secure them, we’re sorry. A stressful “hyped sneakerhead drop”-style frenzy doesn’t feel very Spyplaney. And yet the clearest alternative — overproducing instead of keeping the run small — would have been much less Spyplaney. That’s all we’re planning at the moment, but it felt awesome to put something fire into the world that we’re proud of, and to see it connect with people, so maybe we’ll cook up a restock or something else before too long, if we’re certain we can Do It Right™.
Speaking of doing it right: The launch party was as right as rain, brother!
Shout out to the legions of Spyfriends who flowed through, including the big homie Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, Rashida Jones, sonic wizard Ariel Rechtshaid, Despot, Anya Bondell, Leia Jospé and a few other kindvibed VW-extended-universe souls. They shared the sidewalk with Nick Williams from Small Talk Studio; the Throwing Fits homies Lawrence and James (rocking the ill reworked Slam Jam x Umbro jersey); Jacob Gallagher and Stella Bugbee from NYT Styles; Noah Johnson from GQ; Ezra Marcus, who wrote one of the great magazine pieces of our time (about the psychos at the L.A. restaurant Horses, for New York); producer Danny Gabai, in town with Andy Theodore to screen the new Alex Ross Perry Pavement documentary; Tory Burch runway designer Chris Peters; ceramicist Shane Gabier; Nathan Taylor Pemberton; Jian DeLeon; Geoff Snack from Wrong Answer; some Rebounder boyz; Alex and Lilly from Blluemade; Samer Saliba; Sami Reiss of Snake America; Brynn Wallner; and a ton more Swag Angels we met for the first time. We hope you had as much fun hanging with us as we did hanging with you.
Huge shouts to Tal and Eldar of Colbo for their gracious & sauced-out hospitality, big thanks to Ghia for supplying n/a drinks, and major props to Zev Rovine Selections’ new canned-wine line for making delicious & crushable wines. Please be clear that Obōz paid for this wine — this is not hollow “sponsored” praise. It’s real. Erin and I are smacking our lips at the fond memory of these damn cans, to the degree that we are gonna name them the…
Most delicious wine we drank in NYC:
Famille du Vin’s canned natty slappers
And in that spirit, here’s more Elite Intel into food, clothes, music, comedy, art and vibes we gathered, in handy bulleted Best Of form:
Swaggiest footwear sighting besides the Spyplane shoes:
Leia Jospé, an NYC photographer and videographer who’s worked on HBO’s How To with Spyfriend John Wilson, among a hundred other cool things, rocked the f**k out of some two-tone Skechers D’Lites, as seen in close-up in today’s banner art. For ages, we’ve been waiting to see if a critical mass of people with sauce will ever freak the footwear of Earth’s Uncoolest Sneaker Brand… Sandy Liang shouted them out when we interviewed her here, I saluted a pic of underground musical king James Ferraro killing a murdered-out pair here, and yet it still hasn’t really happened … Leia is bringing the day one step closer, though.Best new men’s clothing shop in NYC, with a brand list that will break even the flintiest clothes appreciator’s brain: