This king wore 1 outfit for a month. You won't believe what happened.
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This king wore 1 outfit for a month. You won't believe what happened.
Are you MACH 3+ enough for the "One-Fit February" JAWN-DETOX Challenge ??
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⚠️⚠️ UPDATE: What did I learn, and will I ever do this again??? Here is the One-Fit February Report.
Here is the original post:
Wow — it’s Feb 1st, which marks the debut of a new modern ritual that we here at Blackbird Spyplane are inventing: “ONE-FIT FEBRUARY.”
For the next 28 days, yr boy will wear ONE OUTFIT and ONE OUTFIT ONLY — and if you out there in Spy Nation are down to accept the One-Fit February (O.F.F.) challenge, feel free 2 join me on this odyssey into the soul…
Think of it as a sort of jawn-detox version of “dry January” that I would have called “dry Jawnuary” except it’s February now.
I can already feel my mind expanding profoundly — but let’s back up real quick & see how we got here…
I’ve long been fascinated by the type of person who can lock in a popping uniform and then just ride it out for the rest of their days, on some Bill Cunningham / Steve Jobs / Karl Lagerfeld s**t … I sometimes wish I was one of them, and maybe one day I will be…
But so far, I’m not. Mostly that’s because my eyes have always been GLUTTONS FOR VARIETY — too much so to settle on a single uniform.
It’s also because there’s an element of the uniform mindset that I really don’t relate to — at least as it’s been enshrined in cheeseball grustle-culture “10 Secrets of Rich Productive Geniuses”-style rhetoric — which is about trying to “free” yrself from the “burden” of caring about clothes so that you can focus more efficiently on “more important” business-success-win activities…
And if we believe one thing here at BBSP it’s that “caring about clothes” is not a “burden” but a JOYOUS and VERY COOL THING to do — whereas grustle-culture’s stock-and-trade is an anhedonic bozo outlook on life that we want nothing to do with!!
AND YET the appeal of a beautiful uniform persists for me all the same, because:
☯️ I’m intrigued by the fantasy of devising a fit so durably popping that it effectively nullifies all other fits, and re-allocating creative energies toward other rewarding pursuit(s).
☯️ I wonder what I might learn if I focus my attention, MONK-LIKE, on 1 set of jawns… Seeing the SAME SHOULDER SEAM hit the SAME PLACE ON MY ARM every day… Feeling the SAME HEM DRAPE swing hither & thither as I STRIDE in the same pair of pants… etc.
☯️ I’ve loved droning music for years, vibing off the way a postminimalist king like Steve Reich can focus your attention on the expressive possibilities of a single set of notes (or chords or timbres or sounds) by repeating the same figure over and over again, with small & incremental variations. I’m curious what a satisfying jawns equivalent might be…
☯️ I’m eager to know what insights and perceptual shifts this experience of dressing within a tight set of “productive constraints” might generate … Will it “reset my palate” in some interesting way? Will it clarify my relationship to PANTS the way a juice cleanse clarifies yr relationship to, like, antioxidants?
☯️ I want to know if I can re-train my restless eye to chill the f**k out a bit…
Right now yr probably nodding & saying:
Different people across Spy Nation will approach this challenge in their own ways…
My own instinctive approach was to figure out a fit not so stiff/scratchy/HARD-EDGED as to be physically punishing BUT also not so plush and structureless that I feel like some soft-boned leisure-wastrel melting into mush…
I wanted to assemble a fit w/ layers, so that there’s some modularity and potential for slight variation built in…
I wanted to choose clothes that weren’t so screamingly loud that I’d get sick of them quickly & give myself a headache, but, by the same token, weren’t so joylessly plain that I’d quickly start to suffer from S.A.D. (Swagless Affective Disorder)…
In the spirit of a uniform, I wanted to assemble a “TONAL FIT” whose component hues live in the same family — also I gravitated towards jawns whose appeal derives first & foremost from tangible qualities like drape and fabric, rather than bold graphics / wild patterns…
HYGIENE / WEATHER DISCLAIMER: Undershirts, underwear & socks will change daily. Also, there are exemptions for exercise clothing; likewise if there’s some TRULY TORRENTIAL DELUGES and other INCLEMENT ACTS OF G-D I might bust out a properly gorped-out rain jacket and boots.
THAT ASIDE, my ONE-FIT FEBRUARY FIT (O.F.F.F) consists of 4 CORE JAWNS…
A. Tarvas x Blackbird Spyplane Explorer shoes in dirty tan canvas. We’re dropping a very small number of these before too long with Finland’s Tarvas, cut from deadstock canvas at their Helsinki factory, & rubbed with beeswax for water resistance… This is a category-scrambling walking~trail~shoe~sneaker, and its versatility should HOLD ME DOWN…
B. Gurkha pants by Kaptain Sunshine, made famous in the BBSP 2021 Pants Awards, cut from sturdy midweight cotton; roomy but structured; a chocolately shade of BROWN, baby.
C. Oversize button-up I copped late last year at the new Evan Kinori store in a superlight wool gauze, which quickly became my favorite shirt… like the pants, this shirt is a RICH BROWN, and also it’s got a very faint zigzaggy / gridded-weave texture. I figure if Agnes Martin tha GOAT could devote decades to painting SUBTLE GRIDS then I could devote the shortest month of the year to rocking one…
D. On my “STEVE REICH INCREMENTAL-VARIATION” modularity s**t, I decided to layer the brown wool-gauze Kinori shirt with the exact same style of Kinori shirt, except cut from a heavier grey-beige wool-cashmere blend. On a warmer day this s**t will remain on STAND BY.
… Plus 3 PERIPHERAL JAWNS…
E. For when it’s hell of cold out, the fleece I copped a couple years ago from Okayama’s Cottle, cut from a yak-wool / Supima-cotton blend, with a grey-beige body and LOAMY BROWN accents, via persimmon-dyed paneling, that echoes the two shirts underneath.
F. Visvim shop coat in natural-dyed black — an outer layer for light-drizzle type scenarios…
G. Undyed linen cap — made in NYC by Blluemade from lightweight neutral-toned Belgian FLAX FIBER, for those days when I need to swaddle my domepiece…
… and VARIOUS INFRASTRUCTURAL JAWNS (yr boy’s socks, undershirts, panties, etc.)
🧠 Will I emerge from this monthlong ritual more finely attuned to the interrelationship between my body, my mind and my jawnz?
You’ve gotta imagine yes !
🧠 Will I learn profound lessons whose enormity we can only guess at from this current vantage point?
Knowing me, probably !
🧠 Will I wind up hating that I did this and decide it was sort of mad dumb?
Could happen, but I don’t think so!!
I’ll report my findings at month’s end, and if u wanna join me on this DETOXIFYING JAWN-CLEANSE ODYSSEY, don’t let the fact that it’s Feb 1 deter you… The time you spend today devising your own “O.F.F.F.” counts toward the ledger, and u can start rocking it tomorrow — let’s see what happens !!
⚠️⚠️ UPDATE: What did I learn, and will I ever do this again??? Here is the One-Fit February Report.
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This king wore 1 outfit for a month. You won't believe what happened.
How much do I need to start setting aside for the Tarvas?!?
"cheesball grustle culture" -- hate it, but love this term, which is new to me. THX KING