Nouveau GORP, vintage Hermes, sk8erboi Fido Dido & more

The 4 coolest things BLACKBIRD SPYPLANE spotted this week

Photo via NASA/Jim Ross

Welcome & congratulations on receiving this collector’s-edition, first-ever installment of BLACKBIRD SPYPLANE, your no. 1 source across all media for recon on dope under-the-radar joints. Here at BBSP we’ll interview interesting ppl, speak FIRE trends into existence, and round up things you would be a fool to not fuck with heavy.

You can follow us on Instagram here and on Twitter here, but in its purest and most beautiful form this is a must-read newsletter / web log, and what better way for us to inaugurally bless yr inbox than with a roundup of “the 4 dopest things we spotted this week” ??

1. Vintage Hermes scarf w/ optical-art-looking-ass galloping-horse motif

Like lots of ppl, we’ve been on the lookout recently for bandanas & scarves to affix to our faces when we’re not sequestered in the damn crib. Vintage Hermes joints — positively ID’d as on-trend in GQ by ace jawnspotter Rachel Tashjian — make for excellent candidates, and this one, coursing w/ horse power and Bridget Riley Op Art waviness, is one of our favorites we’ve come across. Asking $80 here.

2. Le Coq Sportif L-Wanderer sneakers

Sometimes the Rare-Joints Muse sends you into a fugue state and speaks through you in pre-verbal frequencies of dopeness. Something along these lines must have happened with these Japan-only Le Coq Sportifs, which we have no memory of finding — they’re just there, screenshotted in our phone. Their chunky trail-runner vibe is so bizarrely cool that even organic lab dot zip doesn’t seem to know about them, but the trick here is that you’ve got to use a Japan-based proxy to cop, i.e. the (quick & reliable, in our experience) service From Japan: around $125 plus fees.

3. And Wander High Loft Fleece Pant

And Wander is a tight nouveau-GORPCORE brand founded by former Issey Miyake designers and made entirely in Japan < cough cough unlike Snow Peak cough >. We copped these exact pants a month ago on deep discount in white and they are no question the best sweats we’ve ever owned — thoughtfully designed in little ways that you keep discovering as you wear them, and plush as hell to the degree that you might inadvertently touch your knee in the course of rocking them and wonder for a full minute if you are petting a soft goat.

They’re on sale right now in charcoal at Seattle’s excellent Blue Owl, $185, and at Slam Jam in white and a straight-up mesmerizing yellow, $184.

4. FUCT x Fido Dido ‘90s longsleeve

Fido Dido was a minor ‘80s / ‘90s icon who made zero sense beyond his vibe, which was kind of like if Bart Simpson was the “Life is Good” logo. He was created by two friends who doodled him on a napkin then peddled him on t-shirts around NYC and eventually sold him off as a 7-Up mascot. Meanwhile the skateboarding company Fuct — founded in L.A. in ‘90 but recently in the news because of their part in a Supreme Court reversal of a ban on “scandalous” (LOL) trademarks — is another street legend from that era. So it’s cool to see both come together on one excellently faded-and-cracking vintage long sleeve. Asking $75 here.

P.S.: ☮ and blessings to certified quality-joint-appreciator and wise SPYPLANE receiver Edith Young for giving us a little pre-launch nod the other day in this Man Repeller column about how to help yr loved ones look cool:

See u next week !