Quit brand-simping, partner đ¤
Chill with the logos... Ties are dead relics of a CURSED recent past... And more SPYPLANE HOLY DECREES
FYI in this coming Thursdayâs sletter weâve got exclusive SPY-ACCESS to a rare studio sale from the young prince of the Bootleg Tee Game, And After That, which will benefit Frontera Fund, providing safe access to abortions/healthcare to people in Texasâs Rio Grande Valley.
This will be a Classified subscriber âxclusieâŚ
MeanwhileâŚ
Every now & then at Blackbird Spyplane we invite you, the âbeautiful & blessedâ members of SpyNation, to ask profound questions about life, love & the jawn sciences, which we supply with unbeatable answersâŚ
Sometimes?? People ask us to weigh in on contentious topics with our unbeatable sagagious takes like as if our name was Judge Spyplane, smacking down the gavel with authority.
And even though Blackbird Spyplane is a positive & kindvibed âstyle & nature newsletterâ (as perceptive SpyFriend Dean Kissick accurately described us in a column a few weeks ago), we are capable of spicy categorical declarations, a.k.aâŚ.
đđSpyplane Holy Decrees đđ
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đ Decree No. 1 đ
âThoughts on âbrand synergyâ when assessing a fit?â â@jamesrrrr
Weâre basically brand-agnostic when it comes to the question of âfit synergyâ â all other considerations being equal (such as fabric, fit, color, poppingness etc.), any piece from any designer can theoretically work with any piece from any other designer.
If anything, assembling clothes by multiple designers into an outfit is a great way to avoid looking like you went âstraight off the rackâ head to toe / a great way to avoid looking like you let a lookbook dress youâŚ
The main scenario where âbrand synergyâ becomes an issue, I guess, is if youâre wearing a bunch of âconflicting logosâ i.e. Nike socks with New Balance sneakers with an Adidas t-shirt or something.
But in that case our Spyplane Decree is that you have ensnared yourself in a lose-lose Catch-22: If all the big-a** logos you are wearing âclashâ with each other, then you are wearing too many big-a** logos! And if all the big-a** logos you are wearing âsynergizeâ ⌠then you are wearing too many big-a** logos!
When people get invited to the Nike Company Store in Beaverton (an invitation that Blackbird Spyplane the well-connected âunbeatable reconâ gods have unsurprisingly received on a couple occasions) they ask you to not wear competitorsâ clothes and instead keep the s**t all-Nike while on the premises.
I can see adhering to a âbrand synergyâ policy in that context, i.e. as a matter of extremely site-specific courtesy. But if you find yourself out in these streets â or even at the damn gym â consciously & assiduously going âall stripesâ or âall checksâ in a fit and you arenât a sponsored âambassadorâ / Run-DMC in 1986??
Thereâs a dangerous possibility youâre âbrand simping,â partner, and we know youâre better than that.
đ Decree No. 2 đ
âAny special considerations for tucking into shorts?â â @Dirtsalad
Nope, our famous Tuck All Tops philosophy (which isnât that you must tuck all tops, just that you can try to tuck any top you wish) has no shorts-specific sub-clauses...
If itâs a long button-up tucked into small-inseam shorts, though, make sure the shirt tails donât creep out of each leg đ.
đ Decree No. 3 đ
âAre graphic tees over?â â @accidentallypeeingontheseat
You can love graphic tees, like we do here at Blackbird Spyplane, and still acknowledge that weâve absolutely hit âPeak Graphic Teeâ in recent years, to the degree that virtually any vintage tee with âY2Kâ energy sells for like $150 and up on Depop.
Every imaginable entity â pop stars, indie acts, politicians, legacy magazines, streetwear brands, high-fashion brands, podcasts, wine bars, restaurants, taco stands, movie studios, etc., etc., even great newsletters â seems to sling their own graphic tees these days, too.
First, letâs take a second to think about why graphic tees got so big circa 2021 ⌠Two factors strike us as HIGHLY RELEVANT:
The âdemocratizationâ of jawn-design â there is no garment with a lower barrier of entry to someone who has âa visionâ and wants to get it out into the world fast ânâ easy. This is basically dope. You can cop a blank; slap whatever you want on it; and reap a (theoretically) high return on a (relatively) small investment â margins that make graphic tees appealing to all kinds of people, large and small, trying to make a buck. And the technology has become broadly accessible to not only design a jawn and get it produced but to put it in front of an amenable audience, too.
1b. Relatedly, social media has made more people more conversant with âwhatâs popping,â and t-shirts represent an extremely easy way for jawns enthusiasts to âjoin the conversation,â in the sense that theyâre near-universally rockable garments (even more so than baseball caps) that donât (have to) cost very much. Which connects to âThe âInstagram-ifactionâ / âmeme-ificationâ effect on fashion. Weâve lived in an increasingly cacophonous visual world for decades, and that seems truer than ever here in whatever era of the Web weâre in now. So itâs no surprise that graphic tees â the simplest way to âwear an imageâ â have been booming correspondingly.
A robust neural pathway has been carved in our cortexes between the acts of âsmashing the faveâ on a pic <~> âsmashing the RTâ on a meme <~> and âsmashing the copâ on an eye-catching graphic tee, in the sense that all three activate closely related parts of the brain, and closely related ways of engaging with contemporary visual culture.2b. When you cop a tee, you can take something âvirtual and infiniteâ (i.e. an appealing image you saw online) and transform it into something âphysical and limitedâ (a tee) and then of course render it virtual again by rocking the tee in a fit pic, and on and onâŚ
âWow, Blackbird Spyplane,â youâre saying right now. âCompelling and clear-eyed analysis as always. So â are graphic tees over?â
Well, the category is objectively BLOATED⌠the kilotons of water and cotton (not to mention underpaid labor) required to sustain that bloat is, like so many aspects of contemporary life, nauseatingly untenable⌠and among Mach 3+ jawns enthusiasts who value âsurpriseâ and âfreshness,â fatigue levels at seeing âyet another graphic teeâ are correspondingly high.
But despite all that, graphic tees new and old still sing out to us, because they remain such a potent talisman / delivery system for creativity and emotion, whether that emotionâs nostalgia (in the case of, say, late-â90s personal-computing tees); sentimentality (in the case of a collectible hunted down on eBay or a souvenir snagged on a vacation); fandom (in the case of a tee commemorating a favorite band or a favorite dope-joints newsletter); etc., etc.
In other words, people could stand to ease up on the damn graphic tees a bit â but they are not over, because at their core, graphic tees are too effective at what they do, and contain too much potential for true excellence, even amid the bloat, to die.
đ Decree No. 4 đ
Thoughts on sleeve prints? â @Adrianlucariowong
Theyâre kinda torched, but we still like them! (Especially the StĂźssy x Ken Price tee I swagger-jacked from SpyFriend Small Talk Studio, which has colorful images of Priceâs gloopy ceramics running down the sleeves.)
đ Decree No. 5 đ
When are ties coming back? â @Persiangroove