How we made the greatest shoes of 2025, 2026 & 2028

The Moss Wanderers are out

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.

We just dropped the Definitive Spyplane Guide to the Best Japanese Clothesmakers, here.

Hello. Here’s what you need to know right up top: We helped make the best shoes of 2025.

They are going to be the best shoes of 2026, too, the second-best shoes of 2027, then once again secure the top slot as the best shoes of 2028. We can make no guarantees re: 2029 but we’re thinking Top 5.

They’re a collaboration between us, Helsinki’s Tarvas and Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty Worldwide. They’re called the Moss Wanderers and...

🏁 They’re available in person today at 6 of the world’s greatest shops:

• Ven. Space in Brooklyn, NY

• Neighbour in Vancouver

• Nitty Gritty in Stockholm

• Rendez-vous in Paris

• Understory in Oakland, CA

• and Maidens in Tokyo

🏁 This Thursday, November 13, the Moss Wanderers will hit those shops’ websites.

🏁 And we’re throwing a 🌿 launch party 🌿 that same evening, Thursday Nov. 13, from 6 - 9 PM, at Ven. Space (369 Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn), with music and drinks.

🏁 This Friday, November 14, they go live at the Tarvas site at 11 a.m. ET.

Classified-Tier Spyfriends will get ***early access*** to that drop. We’ll share the password in this coming Thursday’s sletter.

You’re right to wonder, How did we get here?

So let me take you behind the scenes.

Back in December of 2024 Erin and I got a message from the homie Jukka Lehtinen, designer and co-founder of Tarvas.

Jukka moves slowly and deliberately: At the time, Tarvas had put out a total of three styles ever. But he told us he’d cooked up a brand new shoe. Designing it, he’d followed some “approach-shoe cues,” he said, while aiming for a sleeker, more elegant overall effect. The new model was called the Wanderer.

He had photos of a prototype, and he wanted to know what we, as Mach 3+ taste-havers, thought:

The DM that sparked it all off

Mamma mia — the prototype looked fantastic.

This shoe was low-profile without being preposterously dainty, meaning it looked cool now and would continue to look cool as time went by. It felt a little GORPY, a little ‘90s Prada Sport… a little “Scandinavian gallerist” as far as the clean upper, but with just enough hardbody toughness on the mudguard — and just enough undulation on the Vibram sole — to keep things charming and unpretentious.

Damn, we thought, Jukka killed it, no notes. “I think they look awesome,” I told him.

We kept talking over the next few weeks, and locked in on a fun idea: A three-way Wanderer collab between Blackbird Spyplane, Tarvas, and the Spyfriends at Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty Worldwide, who had been talking with Jukka about linking & building on a Wanderer, too.

Putting a murdered-out sample pair to its paces in NYC this past spring

Early this year, Jukka shipped me a sample of the all-black general-release Wanderers so I could start wear-testing the style. When I traveled to NYC in May, and then Paris in June, I brought them along, to see how they held up under big days of metropolitan steps-getting and how they held up under the gazes of the highly discerning, very good-looking people I find in my orbit as a matter of course when I’m in world-class cities.

The answers, respectively, were phenomenally and exquisitely.

We felt confident putting them in our list of the 35 Most Iconic Designs of the Spyplane Era.

One huge question remained, though: What spin would we, Blackbird Spyplane, put on this shoe?

We wanted to honor Jukka’s excellent design, but warm it up a few degrees. We wanted to increase the crunchy energies a bit, so that the Wanderer would feel fully at home here in Northern California. And we wanted to dial down the cool-Scando-gallerist energies just a whisper — keeping them to where a cool Scando gallerist would still look great in the shoes while standing next to austerely handsome metal sculptures… but a bit… earthier.

A profound vision came to Erin: a warm, luminous, moss-green suede that would do the warming and the whispering, and which would pop off the black of the mudguard & sole just so.

We set about chasing that vision, rummaging through untold binders of swatches until we found a clear winner, a water-resistant repello suede from a venerable Leeds, UK, tannery that’s been around since the 1890s.

After subjecting the swatch to extensive proprietary advanced chromatic scrutiny, we confirmed that this color was dope & correct.

Tarvas made a sample for Erin, and our wear-testing continued through the summer.

Erin’s moss-green sample pair, above right, on a carpet at the Pompidou in June, at the Wolfgang Tillmans show

The result?

A beautiful, extremely comfortable shoe with an ingenious design. The upper is a single piece of suede, folded and stitched into place, wrapped with a rubberized-leather mudguard and set on a low-profile Vibram sole.

We sent word to Finland: “Run ‘em up, friends — artisanally & in a small batch.”

Mission accomplished.

Some production shots Jukka took at the factory in Portugal

Just last week, no less tasteful a Spyfriend than Highsnobiety editor-in-chief Noah Johnson put these in his roundup of the year’s best shoes. Thank you dude.

A quick note on sizing: I take a 10.5M in most New Balances, an 11M in most Nikes, and a 10.5M Wanderer fits me best. Erin takes a 9W in most New Balances and wears a size 7M Wanderer.

Again, the Moss Wanderers are available in-store at the 6 stockists mentioned above now. They hit those stockists’ webshops this Thursday, and we throw a launch party at Ven. Space in Brooklyn that evening.

They hit the Tarvas site this Friday at 11 a.m., with an early-access window for our Classified-Tier Subscribers.

If you’re in the Recon Inner Sanctum, we’ll share the password with you in Thursday’s Plane.

Thank you as always for wandering with us and…

P☄️E☄️A☄️C🏌️E til next time!

— J & E

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.

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.