Swaddle season approaching
Swaddle season approaching
Evan Kinori exclusive FW23 first look, handsome house shoes for the low, breaking Lauren Manoogian intel & more
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — our comprehensive guide to Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — is here.
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Peep our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of gems in the comments.
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— Jonah & Erin
First off — It’s the last day to enter our Spygiveaway for the first-ever cut & sew collection from NYC’s Small Talk Studios. Read about it and enter here.
In today’s Spyplane we’ve got:
Little-known unisex house shoes for the low
An exciting on-the-ground scoop from our NYC showroom visit with Lauren Manoogian
And more!
But before that —
One of our favorite designers is the Bay’s own Evan Kinori, a young master of beautiful, roomy, precise-but-unfussy, extravagantly practical clothes.
Tomorrow he’s releasing his Fall 2023 collection. It includes several brand-new pieces he’s never made before, plus a bunch of beloved standbys he’s either updated or cut from fabrics he’s never used before.
We asked Evan to share some insight into a few new pieces, fabrics and designs he’s especially excited about this season — in a little “Spyplane First Look” sneak peek.
First up, Evan spotlit his use across multiple garments — including the 3-button jacket pictured above — of woolen cloths from Fox Brothers & Co.: A mill based in Somerset, England that’s been operational since 1772 and is highly revered for its flannels and tweeds. “This is my first time using this legendary, ‘best in class’ British woolen mill,” Evan says. “I think I heard the name mentioned even before I started a company, but for some reason it can take a long time to complete the circle on certain things. It’s definitely some of the nicest fabric I’ve ever used. This stuff exudes archival elegance, like it can be worn forever.”
As far as a specific design he’s psyched about, Evan singled out “the new Big Coat, in a specially developed heavyweight brushed wool check.
“This is sort of a continuation of a coat I used to make: A really simple walking coat, updated now with some different details and more generous volume, with a dropped shoulder — not too long, but not too short. It can be worn more ‘formal’ with the lapel down, or buttoned all the way up.
As far as the “specially developed” wool? “This check fabric was woven on old shuttle looms with woolen yarn spun in Japan from a mixture of British and New Zealand wool — raw materials characterized by a dry and robust hand. The cloth feels a bit airy and lofty, deceiving you of its weight.
“To add to the mystique, this particular weaving mill was founded by Rei Kawakubo and has pretty much worked exclusively with CDG and Yohji since day one. The cloth came out of the mill’s archive. It was originally developed in the early ‘90s and — after some challenges in sourcing the yarn and changing the construction a bit — they were able to reproduce it for me. I asked to have it brushed to blur the weaving structure and pattern, which also helps bring softness and warmth to the fabric.”
Another fabric he’s stoked about this season is some “corduroy from Japan,” as pictured above right on the Field Shirt. It’s styled over a striped Two Pocket Shirt cut from “a really cool, subtly complex yarn dye consisting of a navy & brown background with a thin white double stripe, woven by this small-scale family-run mill in Shizuoka, Japan I’ve been working with over the past few years,” Evan says.
As far as the cords, “maybe I’m boring, but I never tire of good corduroy,” he says. “It looks great in August Sander photos, and it looks great today. This one happens to be in a smokey/charcoal/taupe color, with just the right fade — the result of a somewhat unpredictable dye process. The rows have a bit of irregularity to them from the older looms, which gives the cloth added warmth and charm.”
And for the first time, there are some 6-eye Kinori boots this season, made in partnership with Tricker’s. “A very logical next step in our ongoing collaboration,” Evan says, “taking an old shape from their archive and giving it the same treatment as the Tramping Shoe we make with them. This features the same last shape, the same super-lightweight, replaceable Vibram Vi-Lite sole, and the same minimal stitch-size on the uppers. If anyone gets a pair, I suggest picking out your own fun laces from Paracord Planet — we spent way too much time trying to get these to come with vintage hiking-style laces, with nice metal aglets, only to suffer a final blow that caused us to throw in the towel. Some things you just can’t pull off on a tiny scale :( ”
Evan Kinori’s FW23 collection will launch tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 20, at his San Francisco studio, 1367 Valencia St. Clothes will hit his (newly redesigned) site a few days later. And the collection will start to roll out at shops — including the Spyfriends at Vancouver’s Neighbour, Portland’s Boswell and Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty — over the next several days, too.
Meanwhile —
Some elusive & cool unisex house shoes are newly available, just in time for the onset of “Swaddle Season.” And they’re coppable for the low…!
