Home-enswaggening technology
For the low! Plus confessions of a Young Spyplane, how to freak a familiar slapper, forever fleeces & more
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
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 B.L.I.S.S. List — a comprehensive index of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — is here.
There’s a few Spyplane tees and totes in the Spy Store.
— Jonah & Erin
Blackbird Spyplane back with you — beautiful, blessed & bussin as ever. Today we’ve got:
Sick modular Made in NY pressed-plywood shelves priced for the low that ship free throughout the U.S. and take a minute to assemble
Elevated unisex “post-GORP” all-wool forever fleeces so d*mn refined they barely read as GORPY depending how you rock them
Speaking of styling, a slick move — unconventional yet approachable — for freaking a banger piece
And more!
BUT FIRST —
Let’s do a visionary rummage through the Personal Spyplane Reader Q dossier real quick:
“What was your ‘aha moment’ with your sense of style? When did you start liking clothes?” — noadamek
I (Jonah) trace my interest in clothes back to a ‘90s-era adolescence spent significantly in the hallways of public schools around my native New York City, where kids were not merely vicious in their appraisals of appearance, the way most kids tend to be, but vicious in their appraisals of granular fashion choices. And — since this was New York — these kids were typically mad correct and ahead of the curve in their opinions about, e.g., not just what sneakers you wore, but how you laced them; not just what puffer jacket you wore, but how it did or did not match your backpack; not just how your pants fit, but how they sat at your waist and interacted with your footwear; etc., etc.
It was a kind of trial by fire, instilling in me the notion, for better or worse, that paying detailed attention to how you dress, head to toe, is a high-stakes matter!! Of course, being vicious about what other people wear — as fun as it can be to get a little CHEEKY about some doofus rocking cursed [kindvibed redaction] or a pair of torched [kindvibed redaction] — is a losing proposition, so I was happy to internalize the importance of holistic jawns consideration but leave the adolescent-cruelty crucible behind me!!
“Please hit us with more warm-weather recs. It’s easier to look good when you can layer.” — joevalentinekirwan
We tend to write about dope weather-appropriate jawns seasonally & as we find them, and right now it’s wet & cold out, but I will say that the past few summers I have found myself abroad during humid heatwaves, and the simplest advice I can give for getting off fits in the heat is:
Get you some loose-fitting slappers cut from linen and Ventile cotton
Rock light headgear for flyness & sun protection — the Man-tle cotton-linen bucket hats (out of the sunburn nation that is Australia) are perfect for this
Make peace with sweating constantly and do your Zen-like best to reconcile physical unpleasantness with a feeling of swagginess
Keep in mind that — in some of the hottest climates on earth — many people actually cover up in baggy slappers, rather than just baring mad skin, to ward off Helios’s harmful rays… Such as ma rocking Issey and gloves on the bike in Beijing in July, below:
For my part, when I was reporting my NYT Magazine profile of Michael Mann in swampy-and-hot Modena a couple summers ago, I packed flowy linen pants and oversize linen button-ups, including one from the SLEPT-ON California-based slapper-crafters we shouted out here. I also brought an ecru linen gardening jacket from the Spyfriends at Blluemade that I tossed on at night, not even because it got chilly enough for it but because the psychological allure of being able to layer was so strong it was worth the slight heat penalty.
Last July, visiting Seoul under similarly gnarly conditions, I brought along a pair of Lemaire Ventile-cotton “military” pants — baggy and lightweight but beautifully cut and densely woven — plus the cheap, breathable, cool-looking vintage hiking shorts we wrote about here, which are definitely still floating around secondhand…
CHECK OUT THESE FANTASTIC HOME-ENSWAGGENING PRESSED-PLYWOOD SHELVES—
They’re made in New York by a small operation, they come small, they come big, you can expand them over time, they ship flat-packed to the lower 48 states for free (and Canada for $35), and — O yes ! — they are coppable for the low: