When you find the '96 Prada grail for the low, you COP IT!

Wild vintage finds and ways to style them

Happy New Year, and welcome back to Concorde, the Blackbird Spyplane “women’s vertical,” except it is for everyone who is cool.

Our roundup of the Best Pants Out is here.

Our newest Home-Goods Guide is here.

Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.

The early days of January … who needs to buy anything new right now, when the year itself is so fresh? Sure, maybe your eye catches on an unexpected “off-season” gem… Maybe some coveted-but-too-costly FW23 piece made it to markdowns without selling out… But mostly, this is a time when the Mach 3+ clothes rocker feels inclined to downshift, hibernate, and dig through the slappers they already have on hand. OR, at the very most, to take a long & luxurious look at the plethora of vintage gems out there… which shiny new pieces can sometimes distract us from!

I (Erin) have been on a lucky streak with the vintage searches recently, bringing home grail after grail, and it’s high time I shared some steals, deals & scores with you. Rare delights, cheap thrills and underpriced museum-worthy pieces from obscure lines and genius slapper-crafters alike — including Miuccia P, Issey M, Donna K and Dries V-N!! I’m talking about shoes, coats, pants, skirts, bags & more. I’ve also got simple ways to style pieces from disparate eras and designers, plus a couple of my favorite lesser-known shops to turn up vintage treasure.

LET’S KICK THINGS OFF — WITH A PARADOX:

How do I square my documented love of matching sets with my collision-embracing inner Pattern DJ? The answer is a rare jawn unicorn: the perfectly mismatched set.

I’ve been on the lookout for a great one of these for years, and back in November I spotted my platonic ideal at the superb San Francisco vintage shop Body Philosophy Club, who strike pay dirt at estate sales in and around the Bay Area.

It’s an ‘80s-era set from the consistently great (if dubiously named??) Issey Miyake “Plantation” sublabel, which we’ve shouted out before, and yet most people still sleep on it — their loss, your gain!

The jacket and skirt, pictured above, match and mismatch at the same d*mn time thanks to a clever little trick where the colors of the large-scale plaid invert across the two pieces. That’s the main event. But this set, cut from a Japanese cotton that drapes beautifully, is also typical of Plantation in all the little considered details you discover up close: the jacket lapels are stitched to the shoulders, so they’re permanently pressed open, origami-like, and the wrap skirt has a cool apron detail (sort of like a flat peplum?) that folds at the waist and cascades down the front. It’s a set that tells you in no uncertain terms how to wear it — and in some cases that might be obnoxious, but who am I to argue with Issey’s vision??

There’s a very cool, nearly identical set available right now —