Escape from Swag Purgatory
Rare footwear intel featuring corduroy sneakers that shouldn't work but somehow they're sick, plus great Japanese bags & more unbeatable recon
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Our interviews with Nathan Fielder, Brendan from Turnstile, Adam Sandler, Issy Wood, MJ Lenderman, Evan Kinori, Steven Yeun, Maya Hawke, Bon Iver, André 3000, Sandy Liang, Matty Matheson, Laraaji, Ryota Iwai from Auralee, Tyler, The Creator, John C. Reilly, Rashida Jones, Father John Misty, Kate Berlant, Camiel Fortgens, Clairo, Conner O’Malley and more are here.
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There’s a trove of rugs, cushions, lamps, ceramics and more in our Home Goods Index.
Right up top—
Last weekend The Observer published a profile about us online and in their print mag. Erin and I (Jonah) spent an afternoon here in the East Bay hanging out with the writer, Francisco Garcia, and a morning with the photographer, Nicholas Albrecht, walking around downtown Oakland. You can read the feature here.
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
Pan-searing your way out of Swag Purgatory
Corduroy has no business on shoes — but we found some improbably sick ones
Deep-cut Italian-made walking-boot heat no one is checking for
More rare sneaker intel
Clean, simple, new Japanese tote bags
And more!
Let’s get to it —
Three things we love here at the sletter are 1. Cool silver sneakers, 2. Getting out for long nature walks, and 3. Actually wearing your clothes, to the point they truly become yours, reach a higher plane of lived-in, pan-seared dopeness, and free you from the Swag Purgatory of looking “fresh off-the-rack.”
These loves are interconnected. You might think a silver sneaker is unrockably flashy, but you’d be surprised by how readily the right pair can perform “neutrals duty” in an outfit. Of course, if you get some scuffs and other good honest wear on them, it only helps things along. And while nature trails are a great place to flambée footwear, if there are none near you, a few days getting in steps on city streets will of course work wonders, too.
Over the past several months we’ve called out excellent silver trainers from a slept-on Italian line, here, and banger silver-and-black reissued Nike track shoes, here. (We prophetically saluted the return of silver 2000s-vibed “cyborg raver nurse”-style running sneakers back in 2021.)
But for the past two years, I have been beating the s--t out of a different pair of silver running shoes altogether — a pair so comfortable and cool-looking that some sauced-out people just rock them as daily drivers. I’ve rarely seen Spyfriend Nur Abbas of Gnuhr, for one, wearing anything else.
The thing is, I’ve cooked them to the point that, while they look as good as ever to me, they’re no longer operating at Peak Performance on these rocky 18% inclines. I decided to shift them to a graceful life of civilian semi-retirement, and that meant I needed another pair of silver sneakers to replace them.
It was a hunt for slappers, during which I found some gems that would serve you well in both gorpy contexts and strictly Looking Cool Scenarios: