Masked and anonymous
An incognito new line from a great designer. Plus simple gorpy footwear excellence, an elite home-goods plug opens tomorrow & more
The reason Blackbird Spyplane exists is our subscribers. We don’t run ads, we don’t use affiliate links on new clothes, we don’t do spon. The only people we owe anything are our readers, so we keep some of our best material behind the Recon Curtain. Join our Classified Tier today if you haven’t yet, support greatness, and enjoy a better life in the Inner Sanctum — Jonah & Erin
Check out our monumental new list of the 50 Slappiest Shops across the Spyplane Universe.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
There’s a trove of rugs, cushions, lamps, ceramics and more in our Home Goods Index.
Jonah. Erin.
Your advocates — your protectors — your Spyplane.
Back again.
In today’s sletter we’ve got:
A fantastic new design & home-goods shop in L.A. that specializes in rare Mach 8+ Spyplane-approved small makers — with a beautiful space to match the beautiful things they carry — is opening tomorrow
Dope ‘90s tees, very vibey & coppable for not a lotta bread, that nobody’s checking for
More simple gorpy footwear excellence for fall
A unisex Japanese clothesmaker we love goes Stealth Mode, debuting a sick, secret, pseudonymous new line
And more!
Let’s get to it —
Sometimes you encounter a piece of clothing, art, design, music, film, etc., and know straightaway whether it’s good or bad. This judgment hits you so reflexively, and so unambiguously, that you feel confident it will never change.
There’s no “maybe my enthusiasm is misplaced and this is actually mid.” There’s no “maybe I’m hating and it’ll grow on me.” You deem the s--t fire or wack, and that’s that. Case closed.
Unless, as often happens, it isn’t. Because suddenly you become aware of a new piece of information that throws everything into question. That squat old cream-colored clock you saw at a flea market and dismissed as unremarkable and in no way worth the $35 the seller wanted? You learn it’s actually a rare early Noguchi design that sells for ~$1,000 at auction. That old movie with famous actors you stumbled upon in the depths of Kanopy and turned off after 20 minutes because you deemed it a strange, B-movie-vibed trainwreck? You find out that Paul Thomas Anderson loves it, and took inspiration from it when he was figuring out the tone in One Battle After Another. That weird ugly shirt your swagless homie came through wearing? It’s actually by a visionary designer you think is dope, cut in France from fine wools woven on antique shuttle looms to boot. And those beautiful expensive-looking pants your rich tasteful friend showed up rocking? You find out they’re actually [wack designer beloved by people you think are corny].
Just like that, an opinion you felt in your bones moments ago is back in flux. Sure, sometimes you might say, “Paul Thomas Anderson is the king, but this movie’s still rough stuff.” But often, you find yourself doing a full 180: “Mmm yeah, now that I look more closely, I see how this clock’s subtly resolved shape presages Noguchi’s iconic Akari 1A table lamp,” etc.
When your judgment flips like this, some people might say it’s evidence that you have no taste of your own. But the reality is more complicated.
Because what’s demonstrated here is that taste is actually a function of all kinds of contextual information, including information wholly extrinsic to the thing itself. (This is why wack people can ruin something you love.) There is no purely inherent value that exists in a vacuum, separate from cultural information. Context is always constitutive of something’s appeal.
If you have a deeper base of knowledge and broader frames of reference — about clothes, or industrial design, or 1970s cinema — these whiplash reversals are less likely. But even Learned Sages as wise as your boy Young Spyplane can find ourselves surprised by new information, forced to reconsider judgments we thought were firm.
I thought about this the other day, when a small, deep-cut new clothing line finally dropped from a goated contemporary designer out of Japan whose clothes Erin and I love. The twist? They launched the line anonymously, going stealth mode in the hopes that people would encounter their clothes absent the contextual information of who was behind them and what else they’ve done.
The new line has a cryptic website, and only 250 followers on Instagram at the moment. I believe I would deem these clothes sick even if I didn’t know who was behind them, but I do know who’s behind them…