Cooked and costumey
Bad pockets, banging black 2-way-zip jackets, cool springtime color pairings & more
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane
Our Home Goods Report, full of things to enliven the place you live, and stores where you can find them, is here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a helpful rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to sweatpants to underwear — is here.
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
Epaulets are wack and diagonal pockets are on notice
Banging new black two-way-zip jackets
The fantastic color combination Mach 3+ clothes appreciators are feeling this spring
And more unbeatable recon
Let’s get to it —
The other day a reader asked me (Jonah) to second-guess my greatness:
“Do you ever feel like you’re in too deep when you start critiquing hood sizes?” — harvey_aitken
I don’t. It’s called being a Modern-Day Philosopher, brother. Someone else might call it “in too deep.” I call it “paying molecular-level attention to life’s vast mysteries.” And if you thought my profound and provocative meditation on hoodies was granular, well then …
<Usher “Confessions Pt. II” voice> Watch this:
When I exposed the lie of Timeless Style back in December, I kicked things off with the airtight argument that Harrington collars, while supposedly timeless, actually look dumb.
I wanted to pick my battles, so I deleted an additional point about how epaulets look even dumber: Ungainly growths that have spread far beyond their original military contexts to render innumerable jacket shoulders… lumpy… cluttered… goofy. I’m not even including an image, you can picture epaulets and gross yourself out if you want.
Today I am stating plainly that, in Blackbird Spyplane’s book, epaulets are a no-go, instant slapper-ruiners in ~95% of cases. And yes, that includes M-65 jackets, which, if I owned one, I would 🪓 lop off 🪓 those ’lets with alacrity.
And as long as I’m in “pet peeve mode” — and because I have bold opinions that people whose brains aren’t as big & craggy might deem “insane” — I’m taking this opportunity to put diagonal pockets on probation, too. This isn’t an ironclad Spyplane Holy Decree a la “heather gray tees are depressing” and “no-show socks are wack.” Diagonal pockets are not as egregious a transgression as those or epaulets are. But they irk me nonetheless…
To be clear, I’m not talking about diagonal hand pockets, which are ubiquitous, normal and fine. But there’s something about a diagonal chest pocket — especially patch-style and flap-closure, but to a lesser extent zippered ones, too — that hits a discordant note for me. The rest of the garment might be a pleasantly balanced harmonic whole, but then this pocket bursts in, jarringly aslant, and messes it up…
To show I’m not cherry picking, here are some new & old diagonal-pocket pieces, from five labels I admire enormously — including a sweatshirt I actually bought, then had second thoughts about, and now I just hike and chill around the cribbo in it — which would be better with no diagonal pockets:
“Jonah,” you might be thinking. “What the f**k are you talking about?”
Fair question. I’d had some drinks the evening this first hit me, and my position retains something of those loose ‘n’ boozy origins. But my conviction has only grown firmer. The diagonal pocket has a way of disturbing the prevailing physics of a slapper, like when the hotel room starts rotating in Inception. Very cool in a movie, very distracting on a shirt!
Digging deeper into the sauce semiotics at play here, I think part of what’s going on is that many diagonal pockets reflect an aesthetic of “badass” “utility” that feels especially cooked and costumey right now. These pockets tend to derive, after all, from flight- and motorcycle-jacket designs, where the tilted aperture allows a pilot to smoothly retrieve mission-critical s**t with one hand while the other hand steers. This is why they’re often called “map pockets.”
Absent that high-stakes purpose, though, the diagonal pocket risks feeling like a pure, undigested hardo decoration, doing too much in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t kind of way. Either you’re flirting with biker/pilot cosplay, or your shirt has a glaringly ornamental 45-degree pocket that signals nothing but its own “fashiony” utility fetish.
When I see a diagonal pocket like the ones collaged above, I mentally rotate it to a more-pleasing 90 degrees, or I mentally delete it entirely.
Of course there are edge cases and exceptions. The Phigvel jacket above almost kind of works, because the pocket tilt isn’t as severe as the others, so it spices up what would otherwise be a straight-down-the-middle work jacket without going fully overboard. The totemic Barbour International can work despite its map pocket, too, especially if you find one with black snap buttons versus the canonical attention-grabbing shiny metal ones. Erin wears one of these that I bought ~15 years ago (promptly taking a black Sharpie to the yellow logo patch), and she looks awesome in it.
Also, if it’s a piece of actual performancewear you rock while actually doing something performancey, that’s a separate exceptional case.
If you own and love a diagonal-pocket piece, and after reading today’s Plane you look inside yourself and decide, “This is your hang-up, not mine,” know that I feel you, friend. I own and love a ridiculous Visvim fishing vest with velcro-backed fly patches and 11 (!) pockets that I love stuffing with s**t.
But the diagonal pocket, like the epaulet, strikes me as an ungainly detail I want to see freaked / synthesized / refined by a highly gifted designer — or better yet, avoided outright. Not for nothing does my and Erin’s ~least-favorite style of garment, the double rider biker jacket, feature epaulets and a diagonal chest pocket 🙅♀️🥴 !
Meanwhile —
Blackbird Spyplane takes pride in the fact that, back in January, we correctly identified bold, Robby Müller-style 🟥REDS🟥 as a Major 2025 Color to Watch before anyone else on the planet.
We also offered some insights into how to rock them well. That’s a topic worth revisiting and expanding on, because the science of how to color-layer high-potency bold reds with a maximum of sauce and panache, so that they do not overpower you, is tricky…
But here’s a beautifully simple, swagged-out approach that can’t fail: