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 ??
Blackbird Spyplane is a 100% reader-supported masterpiece newsletter. Our interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, André 3000, Emily Bode, Lorde, Online Ceramics, Phoebe Bridgers, Tyler, The Creator, Nathan Fielder, Rashida Jones, John Mayer, Seth Rogen, Mike Mills, Ezra Koenig and more are HERE.
Join our Cla$$ified Recon Tier today ☮️✌🏻 —Jonah & Erin
⚠️⚠️ 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.
🍃 Have fun with a Blackbird Spyplane “Cla$$ified Tier” Subscription to improve yr quality of life, access a bunch of elite exclusive s**t, and support this rare & miraculous newsletter:
🍃 Check out the Spyplane Master Jawn Index, too — our running guide of earth’s poppingest s**t — and the recon-rich Cla$$ified SpyTalk Chat Room.
"cheesball grustle culture" -- hate it, but love this term, which is new to me. THX KING
Too late!! I just copped some jawns before reading the sletter. But otherwise I'm down with one-fit February.