Rules are cool
Plus paradoxically sick footwear that sold out instantly but also people are sleeping on it, a new under-the-radar NYC line & more
Enjoy our extensive new Natural Fiber Workout Gear Report.
We just dropped the smash-hit Spyplane Ultimate Bay Area Guide.
Mach 3+ city tips for traveling the entire planet is here. Spyfriends just came through with recommendations for Puglia and Dublin. We need intel for Beijing, Mérida and Cannes!!
Here’s what you learn about getting dressed when you wear black for a month straight.
We don’t run ads and we never use affiliate links except for one-off secondhand gems we find on eBay and Etsy, and books on the independent bookseller Bookshop. We laid out our position on affiliate links and spon here.
This means the only people we owe anything are our readers.
— Jonah & Erin
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
A new made-in-NYC line designing clothes from beautiful fabrics for men & women under the radar
A great new documentary about GORPY death-drive excellence
Very clean walking shoes from a Tokyo artisan-swag-orthopedics (!) footwear brand whose newest release sold out instantaneously and yet, in a paradox, people are still sleeping on them
But first —
Rules get a bad rap. On one level: Of course they do. You know who likes rules? Hall monitors. And who disobeys rules? Swaggy renegades. When you frame it like this, the implication is clear: Rules are for pedants… scolds… NPCs…
You can see a positive expression of the cultural aversion to rules in the wonderful phrase “Let ‘em cook.” In this construction, swaggy renegades = chefs freaking it at the stovetop. Whereas hidebound rule enforcers = no-imagination, no-sauce dullards who do not cook and, what’s worse, try to prevent others from cooking, too.
When it comes to clothes, the hall monitors (restaurant inspectors?) can be especially obnoxious: “Wearing black with navy? Hmmm you’re in trouble, sir.”
And yet!
While I (Jonah) absolutely roll my eyes at all kinds of so-called rules for dressing, as a general concept, I love and am fascinated by Rules.
This is a topic I’ve touched on a few times over the years. I’ve written, for instance, about the rules that circulate among extremely judgmental in-groups, like cyclists, surfers, and skaters — rules that describe arcane standards of excellence, and establish the boundaries between those who are part of a given community and those who are outside of it.
Not unrelatedly, I’ve also written about how Erin and I are inclined to salute anyone who Lives By a Code. If you insist that the drawstrings on drawstring pants should always hang inside the pants, and that they look goofy when they dangle outside the pants, I can’t say that I care quite as much as you do, but brother, I respect your conviction. If you insist that a jacket that has epaulets or diagonal non-hand pockets would look much less stupid without them, you’re speaking my language.
Last week I got to thinking about rules once again, when we published a sletter about Core Tenets of Good Design as put forth by Jasper Morrison, a revered industrial designer. Morrison draws clear lines between Right and Wrong, not only for himself but for other designers, too.
A big part of why I like that is because, doctrinaire or no, it reflects a smart, strong POV. And yes, Blackbird Spyplane is a pro-nuance publication, but amid all the mystification and squishy relativity of modern life, we believe that a smart, strong POV is something to celebrate, especially in a designer. And celebrating it doesn’t mean you can’t argue with it, too.
So what does this have to do with you, a wearer of cool clothes?
As an outfit assembler, you engage in an act of design daily: You “design” a look, that is, every time you get dressed. And while you might get dressed intuitively, you also might do so with reference to some Rules of Harmonious Dressing that you apply to yourself and to others.
I may find your rules onerous, stifling or inane. But here’s the thing: I might also find them revelatory. Even if I disagree with them, your rules might help me focus my attention on some dynamic, at play in my own outfits, that I never considered.
To illustrate this with a well-known Dressing Rule that is correct in ~99.9% of cases:
Let’s say that you never button the bottom button of your suit jackets, and you insist that people who do button the bottom buttons of their suit jackets look bad.
And let’s say I have always buttoned the bottom button of my suit jackets because, without giving it very much thought, I just kind of assumed it made me look that much more put-together.
But then you tell me about your Rule. And suddenly my attention is directed somewhere it wasn’t previously. A chunk of my outfit that was previously opaque, and perhaps even functionally invisible to me, snaps into focus. Now I’m thinking about how the fully buttoned jacket interacts unpleasantly with my hips when I walk; how the fabric folds, strains and/or bunches up when I sit down; about how rakish I would look if I unbuttoned the bottom button; etc.
Like the interiors expert who steps into a room armed with a set of principles, shifts a chair from one corner to another, and immediately, intelligibly improves the atmosphere, the Dressing Rules Espouser can help you to see your own outfits more clearly — and improve your understanding of an outfit’s “flow.”
It’s an obvious truth, and yet the kind that hides so effectively in plain sight that it can feel epiphanic. I liked the room fine the way it was before. I was ignorant of its infelicity, even if on some level my experience of the room was worsened by that infelicity.
Now my eyes are open. I might decide I can move the chair back if I nudge the coffee table next to it and place a large rug underneath both. Before, I wouldn’t have thought about any of that s--t. My relationship to the room has gone from arbitrary to considered. And I have a rule to thank.
Next up —
Here’s a guy making very handsome clothes in NYC from beautiful natural fabrics, and very few people are checking for him: He has 6,000 IG followers as of the time of this writing, and mostly sells his pieces — men’s, women’s & unisex — direct.
But he’s on the radar of some other designers and cool shops we respect, making him a perfect…
