You're gonna hear cool ppl talking "TONAL SWAG" nonstop thanks to us — ON GOD!!
A jawn superpower hiding in plain sight, PLUS how to rock patterns & more "unbeatable intel" as we conclude our Color Harmony Week Spectacular
Our interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, Tyler, The Creator, Emily Bode, Online Ceramics, Seth Rogen, André 3000, Nathan Fielder, Lorde, John Mayer, Danielle Haim, Daniel Arnold, Thomas Mars from Phoenix, Phoebe Bridgers, Chris Black, Naomi Fry, Michael Stipe, John Wilson, Rashida Jones, Hayley Williams, Ezra Koenig and more are HERE.
Yooo what’s up. FIRST OFF, coming to the newsletter on Mar. 31, a week from today: ⚠️ A very rare pre-sale with our friends at Graziano & Gutierrez ⚠️. Their SS22 collection incorporates a bunch of beautiful natural-dyed fabrics woven in Oaxaca and cut into all manner of ill silhouettes in Portland. We couldn’t be more psyched. This will be a Cla$$ified Tier Subscriber exclusive so don’t sleep!
Meanwhile — on Tuesday we blessed Spy Nation with simple yet revelatory techniques for mixing colors harmoniously and poppingly … it was a sublime case of Blackbird Spyplane doing “unbeatable demystification” in the face of a vexing jawnz-related matter.
We established a few unf*ckwithable guidelines, then ended on a cliffhanger about how to attain “Michael McDonald singing backup on Steely Dan’s ‘Peg’” status when it comes to this color-harmony s**t.
Now the day has come to step up the MF technique…
Because what we didn’t have room to include on Tuesday is a beautiful method for peering into the source code of the Color Matrix and — as a direct result — avoiding looking like a JAMOKE.
We call it “tonal swag,” it allows you to create fresh & pleasing combinations in yr outfits across many colors, and once you know how to look for it you start seeing it everywhere.
For instance: The other day Blackbird SpyFriend Jacob Gallagher at the Wall Street Journal published a piece (linked down below) about dudes who scrupulously cop the exact garments Kanye wears so they can dress in head-to-toe Ye Cosplay:
Peep the story’s lead image, capturing a Full Cosplay Kanye Stan (above left), then look at Actual Kanye. Despite Cosplay Kanye’s highly faithful rendition, you can still detect an undeniable sauce differential between these two outfits — and a major part of what you are detecting is the absence vs. presence of tonal imagination and TONAL SWAG.
Tonal swag applies to an all-black fit and it applies to a multicolored fit, too — and please trust & believe it’s an area of clothes-wearing where you do not want to be caught lacking!!
“Blackbird Spyplane, wow,” yr probably saying right now, “what is tonal swag and how do I unlock it?”
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