Clouds for breakfast
When fashion shows were fun, fall clothes are starting to rain down, under-the-radar vintage comes online & more
Our monumental new list of the 50 Slappiest Shops across the Spyplane Universe is here.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a handy rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to socks — is here.
For custom recon, drop a question in our SpyTalk chat room.
Erin back again with Concorde, Blackbird Spyplane’s “women’s vertical” that the fellas love, too. Every edition is archived here.
Today we’ve got:
Dancing, jumping out of cakes, frying bacon on the runway: Fashion shows used to be fun. Why did the party stop?
One designer in particular whose shows were like dance parties and whose clothes — pioneering unisex slappers — can still be copped for the low
The webstore of an under-the-radar L.A. vintage goldmine just opened yesterday
An autumnal “Slapper Swarm” featuring new button-ups, cardigans, and tees from some of my favorite small lines, just-launched shoes inspired by a flea market find, & more
Let’s get to it —
I (Erin) am a lifelong collector of ephemera — my parents moved recently, and while I was going through their stuff I unearthed a scrapbook I started at the tender age of 6. So I love seeing new projects devoted to archiving printed matter.
There’s Library180, a fashion-magazine archive that opened two months ago in NYC; Ephemera, a part store, part archive that opened in Paris last year and, in turn, supplied the books for the recently-opened vintage clothing store Appendix; also in Paris is Gregory Brooks’ Rare Books; and I’ve been a fan of Oslo’s International Library of Fashion Research since it opened in 2020.
They have a nice digitized selection you can browse online, they link out to other archives, and besides the books and magazines in their own collection, I get a kick out of their array of press releases, post cards, show invitations, label tags, and other miscellanea, like a Belgian chocolate bar Dries Van Noten sent out as a holiday card in 2008:
The library is a great place to discover undersung designers, and behind-the-scenes tales from fashion insiders, largely lost to time. Rabbit holes drop you into other rabbit holes. Case in point: I recently found myself in a deep archive for a designer who real ones recognize, but he remains overlooked by and large.