Shirts lookin' INKY!
James Coward's Spyplane-exclusive capsule is live, plus a Spygiveaway for Canoe Club x Engineered Garments's new collaboration & more
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First up —
Tomorrow, the Spyfriends at Boulder’s Canoe Club are dropping their second collaboration with the NYC legends at Engineered Garments. Of the pieces on offer, our eyes shot to these two lightweight hooded jackets they made in homage to classic old-school GORP-dirtbag 60/40 parkas — a style fused, in our minds, with Oakland’s own Sierra Designs.
And today we’re linking with CC x EG for a classic Spygiveaway:
For the CC x EG take on this silhouette, they told us, “we started with a boxy cut you can throw over almost anything, but cut down the length a bit to allow for plenty of movement and easy access to your pant pockets.” For the fabric, they got “as close as possible to the 60/40 poly/cotton blend cloth” of the OGs, “which allows the garment to drape perfectly, breathe well, and still be water resistant.” Other details include a 2-way zipper, leather toggle hood adjusters, billed hood, and adjustable hem.
We’re bestowing 4 of these jackets — two in “Sky” blue, two in “Dune” beige — upon 4 lucky Classified-Tier Spyfriends. To join the drawing, simply caress the ‘Enter’ button at the bottom of today’s email. We’ll select the winners tomorrow morning, Friday, Oct. 18 at 9 a.m. PT, just ahead of the CC x EG drop. Good luck!
Mamma mia — speaking of Classified Slapper Excellence —
We’re stoked to host a Very Special Clothing Event right here, right now, in this very sletter, with our friends at the mighty minimalist Vancouver line James Coward.

JC are a gifted trio of Canadian mensches whose clothes we’ve admired for years, and they keep getting better. Maybe you’ve seen their garments in person at Mach 3+ shops like C’H’C’M’, Neighbour, Maidens, and Norse Store. Maybe you’ve seen me (Jonah) rocking them in the sletter, which I do often.
It’s extremely hard to make clothes this simple look this good. So we’re honored that James Coward are dropping a capsule of some the coolest pieces they’ve ever made exclusively through the Spyplane today.
The capsule consists of 2 new jackets and 3 new button-ups. The 5 pieces are cut, variously, from dense-weave cotton chambrays and a luminous black wool gabardine sourced from the same mill Yohji Yamamoto uses...

The Range Jacket — top row above — is a new design. “Formally, it carries much of the DNA of its inspiration, the Type 1 Denim Jacket,” designer Dan Garrod told me the other day. “That leaves room to play in the fabric choice and some of the smaller and more subtle details. The fabric we used for this iteration is a stiff, 279-gsm 100% Cotton Voile Weathercloth, from a near-century-old family-owned mill in Shizuoka.” (The mill in question is Furuhashi, founded in 1928 and beloved by other high-level garment-crafting Spyfriends like Man-tle and Evan Kinori.)
“We also produced the Travail Shirt in a few different fabrics,” Dan said. For the green drab and light gray versions, “We used some choice cotton from the same Shizuoka mill.” Then they said f**k it and cut the Travail in a midweight black wool-gabardine, too — “dry, airy, and durable.”
Any Spyfriend who’s encountered Y.G.W.G. (Yohji-Grade Wool Gabardine) knows that no other cloth drapes off the human form quite like this. And look above at how luminous this black is… how it ripples like it’s been WOVEN FROM INK!
In a different very fire register, here’s the same shirt in two crispy, tight-weave cottons:
And here’s the Range jacket laid flat, in black and a deep brown they call (great name alert) “Oarweed”:
There you have it. The jackets are around $500 each, the shirts around $300. The colors are excellent, the pieces slap, the run is highly limited, and for the next 48 hours, Classified Spyfriends are the only people who can access this capsule.
The last time we did a James Coward exclusive (for some natural-dye linen snap-front short sleeves) they had their highest-ever sales day, and every single piece evanesced expeditiously, so if something catches your eye, don’t sleep.
And to be clear, we make no money from this. Our “comp” is simply being Blessed Conduits between one of earth’s greatest small lines and the most tasteful readership across all media.
To access the capsule, use this Spyplane Classified-Tier Exclusive Passcode: