Hyped sneakers CAN transcend profound wackness & become cool
Plus sick embroidered sweatshirts, the "Sleepytime Tea Bear" vibe movement and more
Welcome to today’s Blackbird Spyplane. Before we get to some sick embroidered under-the-radar sweatshirts and the “Sleepytime Tea Bear” vibe movement, let’s spend a few profound & delightful minutes on “HYPE”…
It’s a ubiquitous force in late-modern jawnz enthusiasm, and while U might pretend it doesn’t exist — or that you operate out of reach of its tendrils — hype can nonetheless exert control over you and the clothes you wear in powerful & insidious ways baby!!
Case in point: I appreciate the design of a few Yeezy sneakers in theory, but I own zero pairs. Only 1 model has ever spoken to me to the degree I actually considered copping — the Desert Boot — but the hypebeast frenzy around Yeezy jawnz has always been a roadblock for me: the cultural association between these clothes & shoes and craven raffle-enterers / St*ckX-bidders / sneakerhead herds / etc. is too strong & indelible for me to find what feels like “my own way” into rocking them…
I haven’t figured out how I’d ever wear Yeezy s**t in a way that didn’t loudly advertise my membership in a club I don’t belong to, and I don’t like the way that hype cycles create a totally artificial version of “planned obsolescence,” where a “jawn” gets “bricked” much like a phone running an old OS simply because the hordes have moved on to another shiny fetish object.
…and since there’s no shortage of ill shoes to spend too much money on, I’ve never given it much thought beyond that…
The other day, though, I rolled up to a neighborhood coffee joint and saw a dude posted up with a cool f**ked-up haircut, a charmingly ratty oversize black sweater bisected with a blue and white stripe, cool worn wide black slacks, and a pair of NICELY TOASTED black (“oil” or “graphite”) Yeezy Desert Boots: Scuffed and stained, with snarls & frays on the laces, but tons of life left.
Homie looked fantastic, and like he’d spent the morning “making vibey sculptures and being sexually desirable to cool attractive people,” as opposed to “desperately refreshing the SNKRS app trying not to catch an L in the group chat with the boyz”…
It was at this moment, beholding this young king, that a simple but powerful Spyplane Holy Decree hit me: