Now that's how you post
GPS mindset and more life-improving truths, plus Spyplane Scholarships celebrating a banger new Earth\Studies jacket
Our interviews with Nathan Fielder, Cameron Winter and Geese, Adam Sandler, Brendan from Turnstile, Patrick Radden Keefe, MJ Lenderman, Issy Wood, Evan Kinori, Steven Yeun, Maya Hawke, Bon Iver, André 3000, Sandy Liang, Matty Matheson, Laraaji, Ryota Iwai from Auralee, Tyler, The Creator, John C. Reilly, Rashida Jones, Father John Misty, Kate Berlant, Clairo, Conner O’Malley & more are here.
Check out our monumental new list of the 50 Slappiest Shops across the Spyplane Universe.
Our Cool Mom Style Guide is here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a handy rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to socks — is here.
There’s a trove of rugs, cushions, lamps, ceramics and more in our Home Goods Index.
When you’ve got the kinds of big, beautiful brains necessary to create Blackbird Spyplane, radical life-improving truths occur to you at an elevated rate. Here are a few such truths that came to us recently:
Chadded internet behavior —
The other day GQ kindly named me (Jonah) one of the 50 Most Stylish People Alive.
They identified me as an “Image architect,” “Chef, restaurateur, and actor,” “Monarch,” “Stylist,” “Designer,” “Comedian and game show host,” and “Artist.” I wasn’t totally sure about all those titles, but I do have many styles, so can kind of see how they’re true. In any case, honorees don’t pick the categories, and far be it from me to seem ungrateful.
I shared the graphic to the Spyplane Instagram grid, as one does. That was a week ago. Maybe people thought this was just some weird joke on my part and that I actually Photoshopped the image. Maybe Instagram didn’t surface it much. Either way, there are only ~700 faves on it, which is kind of low for an account that more than 50k people follow.
For a few years now, people have been talking about how IG engagement has gone off a cliff. Some accounts, afraid of getting paltry faves on a pic, post only to IG stories. If they do post to grid, many hide the Likes. Who, the thinking goes, wants a “shamefully” small number of fave smashes sitting there for everyone to see…?
Conversely, however: Who gives a f--k?
This brings us to the gifted and cool Miu Miu stylist Lotta Volkova. In addition to being talented and swagged-out, she has a truly inspirational approach to the grid.
Namely, she posts a barrage of grid pics throughout any given day. Rarely “dumps” — she likes to stand on business and share 1 pic per post.
Here’s the thing: Volkova has half a million IG followers, and a small-minded engagementcuck might note that while some of her posts get ~4,000 faves and others get ~3,000 faves, plenty get ~200 faves, and lots of them get ~100 faves.
But does Volkova care? It doesn’t seem like it. The upshot is a highly chadded, gridflationary approach to posting. We could all take a page from her and go “G.P.S.” Mode — just let the Grid Pics Spray.
I know what you’re thinking, “Jonah, don’t you need to be a cool Miu Miu stylist to pull this off?”
I see your point, and it obviously doesn’t hurt. But I don’t think it’s necessary. Because the real point here is that we owe sites like Instagram and their capricious algorithms absolutely zero purchase on our sense of self-worth.
The faves we do or do not rack up when we deign to share photos from our lives aren’t a measure of anything consequential. We all know this to be true, to the point that typing it out feels obvious, and yet it’s a truth we’re prone to lose sight of.
To be clear, we’re fully in favor of never posting at all and, if you wish, deleting social media entirely. But if you do post, and you take pics that you think rock? Post them. The more of these you post, and the fewer faves you receive, the more Bigger Brained Ws you are racking up regardless, because you’re doing your part to devalue faves — an inane currency that absolutely deserves devaluing.
Extrapolate this as you see fit to other contexts.
Speaking of shifting pic-posting protocols —
IG recently rolled out some new, intentionally blurry filters that make you look like you were drunk when you snapped them on a 2004 flip phone. These filters simulate the unkempt and out-of-focus anti-aesthetic that people started to explore a few years ago in reaction to IG’s overly manicured 2010s-era energy.
The arrival of faux-f--ked-up official filters has me wondering: are we about to see a huge swing back in the other direction? Are Carefully Composed Classically Cheugy Elder Millennial IG Aesthetics cool again? The cheuglier the better??
I’m talking about pristinely lit tablescapes. I’m talking about using the iPhone Bokeh effect on a spiderweb with dewdrops on it. I’m talking about doing the Soy Face. You know I’m talking about Boomerangs!!
New Spyplane Shoes Imminent —
The Tarvas Wanderer is the greatest new shoe design of 2025. We cooked up a special pair in collaboration with Tarvas and our friends at Nitty Gritty Worldwide: The uppers are a single folded piece of moss-green repello suede, with a low-profile black Vibram sole and mudguard.
Six of our favorite shops in the world will be stocking them, as listed above. They drop the week of November 10th. We’re throwing a party that Thursday in Brooklyn at Ven.Space. More soon!
Uniqlo, the IKEA of clothes, makes too many clothes —
Spyfriend Lauren Collins wrote a massive piece at the New Yorker about IKEA back in 2011.
Last month, she published a companion piece, of sorts, about the IKEA of clothes, Uniqlo.
There’s a strangely squishy quote early on about the company and its clothing: “It’s inexpensive, but you feel like you’re not necessarily exploiting a seven-year-old in Bangladesh to get it,” a writer tells Lauren, likening Uniqlo to “Everlane without the moral superiority and H&M without the ickiness.”
That “not necessarily exploiting” hedge is doing a ton of work. This is an observation entirely based on marketing and, more to the point, on vibes, absent any empirical visibility into Uniqlo’s actual manufacturing practices and the ages and nationalities of the workers it does or does not exploit.
The quote captures the way that “right-thinking” people tend to give Uniqlo a mostly vibes-based pass that they do not give to other behemoth clothesmakers.
Lauren establishes, though, that there is in fact plenty ickiness when it comes to Uniqlo, because the company simply produces way too many clothes and deploys an extremely dubious concept (“emotional sustainability”) to justify the glut:
I always hope that a big piece like this, from a great writer like Lauren, will help illuminate, e.g., the nitty gritty of factories; of cheap cotton and cashmere-farming at global scales; and other gnarly supply-chain details, rather than focus on, e.g., a company’s headquarters, founder, and executive-level design talents. Those are interesting areas of the business, for sure, but they’re also the ones where a corporate comms team would rather we keep our attention fixed.
This is a perfect opportunity for us to once again recommend Sofi Thanhauser’s fascinating, humane, and richly reported Worn: A People’s History of Clothing, a book that will change the way you think about clothes.
Finally —
Here at Blackbird Spyplane we are famously magnanimous and non-doctrinaire. But for my money, if a coat is long, then it should hit at, or even better, below the knee. Miss me with a “car coat,” chief. If you’re gonna go long, go long.
Case in point, a few years ago I scored a roomy vintage Y’s for Men midweight black wool gabardine overcoat off Yahoo JP and was pumped, when it arrived, to confirm that the hem indeed hit mid-calf.
Erin is with me on this one. So imagine our delight the other day when the post-GORP visionaries at Portland’s Earth \ Studies hit us up with the exclusive news that they are dropping a brand-new, limited-run unisex banger this week: a black trench coat, made in an edition of 14, that hits sub-knee.
It comes out this Friday, and it’s called the MS-107 Field Trench Jacket. Earth \ Studies conceived of it, in essence, as an extendo-clip version of their MS-105 field coat.
We’ve been covering Earth \ Studies in the sletter for years now, Erin and I have both bought and wear the hell out of several of their pieces, and we visited their studio for our Portland Recon Report earlier this year.
This new trench is part of their performance-oriented P_Article range, where they mix technical fabrics with natural ones. The jacket is made in Jaipur from a windproof and water-repellent “lightweight, breathable, nylon/cotton plain weave and nylon ripstop,” designer Rob Darmour tells us. It’s got an adjustable back vent, packable hood, internal bungee hem, two-way zipper, and felled interior seams.
And to celebrate the launch?
Earth\Studies are generously bestowing “Classified Recon-Tier” Access upon some readers. Yes: Beautiful souls who have inexplicably denied themselves the pleasures of All-Access Sletter Status will receive “Spyplane Scholarships” courtesy of Earth\Studies. To toss your name in the Virtual Bucket Hat, smash the ‘enter’ here, for a chance to get upgraded off our public list and into the Recon Inner Sanctum.
The MS-107 Trench goes live at the Earth \ Studies site this Friday, October 31, at 9 a.m. PT / noon ET, here. They’re on IG here.
P🥐E🥐A🥐C🥐E til next time!
— J & E
My work grants me access to supply chain data from all of the leading apparel and footwear brands in the world. Without this, it is virtually impossible to know how a company is performing both environmentally and within social and labor standards. New disclosures from the EU are driving greater transparency but they won't tell the whole story. Some of the fast fashion brands actually have fairly impressive supply chain performance but a glut is a glut. And no one is talking about degrowth. At one of the more progressive conferences in our sector, several years ago, the keynote speaker implored brands to consider degrowth strategies and you could hear a pin drop. He was basically laughed off stage. My team, a smart and exceptionally educated climate crew, all wear Uniqlo, especially the Lemaire collabs. The dissonance is real.
Love the sletter (as always!), great source of information AND inspiration. I may have a think or three about your point on coats' ideal length - mind you, not for you/taller humans but for more, err, vertically challenged ones such as myself :p