Does yr home SMELL ... Mach 3+ ??
Unbeatable scents, NYC-designed Italian-made slides, one-of-one balaclavas, the case against v-necks + more "recon of the hand of god"
Yoooo GOOD TIDINGS upon you, & welcome to today’s CLA$$IFIED EXCLU$IVE edition of Blackbird Spyplane — a 100% reader-supported electronic-mail miracle.
If you haven’t come behind our unbeatable paywall yet, do yrself a favor, underpay us (we’re cool with it), & enjoy pleasures of the Spyplane Inner Sanctum, including today’s FULL CLA$$IFIED SLETTER !
The other day on IG we put out an open call for “Personal Spyplane” questions about life, love & the jawn sciences — and many profound cerebellum-busters flooded in from the contemplative citizens of Spy Nation …
Today we’re tackling questions whose answers involve —
🗿 Making YOU & the place you live SMELL GREAT
🗿 Little-known NYC-designed ITALIAN-MADE SLIDES for under a hundo
🗿 Excellent hand-made 1-of-1 balaclavas
🗿 The CURSED SWAGLESSNESS of v-neck tees
🗿 And more!
LET’S GET 2 IT — Jonah & Erin
❓❓❓“Layering up top is easy. What are the best winter pants / layering solutions below belt?” —@newexperimentalhours
As far as cold-weather layering, where the goal is to straightforwardly insulate yr stems, just wear thermal long-johns under whatever pants you want … I have Patagonia capilene joints I use on the rare Bay day when it’s cold enough to need them.
BUT what really intrigues me with this question is the potential for swaggy layering (i.e. primarily aesthetic rather than utilitarian) below the waist…
As is often the case, it’s helpful to think this question through by invoking another, evergreen question:
Jeff Ament, as you may know, is the Pearl Jam bassist and early ‘90s saucelord pictured above in the striped shorts & 49ers jacket… He’s best known for his incredible hat game from that era, BUT ALSO around the time of Ten, he and Eddie Vedder (above rocking the sick geometric flannel under the biker vest) went TURBO with “below the belt” layering, too.
Their move in this era was to rock leggings / fitted sweatpants under baggy shorts with some bunched-up socks and high-top sneakers or boots… It’s a semi-advanced maneuver tempered by the rumpled aura of grungy anti-pretension, and to my eyes it has never not looked cool… !!
Another, not-dissimilar lower-layer technique that comes to mind is how And Wander makes some unisex GORP-SKIRTS (like the fleece and nylon joints above) that they style atop fitted pants — an androgynous Japanese-outdoor-gear version of what Ament and Vedder cooked up in the Pacific Northwest circa ‘91.
What you run up against in this line of inquiry is an outdated yet undying cultural skittishness around the idea of men in garments like skirts and leggings. But whether it’s legendary grunge kingz or contemporary GORP experimentalists, the above options suggest a great way to make skirts / leggings feel “more rugged” — and, even more interestingly, to interrogate & subvert the idea of what “rugged” means in the first place!
❓❓❓Best way to keep your home smelling fresh? @_gavincook_
There’s obviously an AROMATIC PREPONDERANCE of ways to keep the cribbo smelling wonderful, but here are 4 joints whose scents we let WAFT WITH ABANDON thru Spyplane HQ…