If your pants don't love you, get new pants
Positive reinforcement from the ankles up. Plus knit wool tees from Japan, saucy menswear lines ladies should be copping & more
Welcome to Concorde, Blackbird Spyplane’s “women’s vertical” that the fellas love as well. Every edition is archived here.
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In today’s Concorde we’ve got:
Collaborating with Gaia to freak the clothes you already own
Enter the void: cutting up tees à la some of the coolest independent designers
Two saucy menswear lines from one brilliant mind that ladies should not miss
Sick knit wool tees made in Japan, LP-sleeve collages & more
But first —
In spite of “these days” and “times like this,” I (Erin) can almost always find a reason to laugh. I’m a homing device for chuckles, alert to bon mots at every turn. Yes, I’ve lived long enough to experience injury, illness and loss, but I know that 🎵she not busy being silly is busying crying.🎵
A pleasure as simple as a CL3VR license plate can fortify me for a moment or two. If you took the time to polish a true 7-character jewel for all to enjoy, I salute you…
Along similar lines, I’ve got to give it up for the ALL CAPS affirmations sewn into clothing from Flax by Jeanne Engelhart, the beloved ’80s-’90s line that every Concorde reader should know.
What set Flax apart, besides the feel-good freedom and body positivity of their cuts — loose linen separates of the sort your favorite elementary school teacher might have been dripped down in — was the beautifully unhinged Esalen ethos embodied in tags they stitched into every garment…
We’re talking about choice morsels ranging from the trippy — “I AM WHAT I CHOOSE TO ENTERTAIN IN MY MIND” — to the proto-Café-Gratitude — “I AM PERFECT HEALTH RADIANT BEAUTY DIVINE ENERGY” — to the metaphysical-biochemical — “ALL MY CELLS ARE PERFECT SPIRIT DOING THEIR PERFECT WORK.” (BTW Jeanne’s ex-husband Matthew, who she started Flax with, literally went on to co-found Café Gratitude👀.)
My all-time favorite? “I BELIEVE LIFE IS FUN”:
When I asked Big Homie Spyfriend and fellow Flax-wearer Emily Keegin about their posi tags, she said, “Honestly, I need my pants to tell me they love me.”
And truly, weird koans or no, if your pants don’t love you, get new pants.
Wow —
We’ve written about sautéing, flambéing and pan-searing your clothes, on the irrefutable thinking that good garments look better worn.
Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in cool designers working with Mother Nature to freak their clothes.
Some are using bolts of linen hung to dry in Enshu, Japan, where violent coastal winds smack permanent puckers into the cloth. Others are linking and building with Helios to create sun-bleached garments that look like they’ve been painted…