The new ugly shoe
It's hot. Plus a vibey trove of bags, clogs that are flames & more
Welcome to Concorde, Blackbird Spyplane’s “women’s vertical” that the fellas love as well. Every edition is archived here.
Our Home Goods Index, including our brand-new 2026 guide, is here.
Check out our list of the 50 slappiest shops across the Spyplane Universe.
In today’s Concorde we’ve got:
Hot comfortable shoes of a kind we see all too rarely
Going “Gal Fieri” Mode and taking inspiration from everywhere, including your nightmares
A trove of great new & vintage bags including ones you can DIY
An art gallery with a fantastic array of gems relatively within reach
And more
Let’s get to it —
Our footwear clairvoyance here is indisputable. In 2023 here in Concorde I (Erin) predicted the return of Puma’s Y2K Speedcat. A year later they re-released that very style. Approach shoes, a la Keen Jaspers? We’ve been bigging these up since Spyplane Year One — shouting out one particularly sick specimen for those who got tired of Salomons way back in 2020 — long before their current dominance. Last March, I was ahead of the curve on the return of the sporty ballerina a.k.a. the sneaker ghillie.
Today I’m ready to salute a new crop of shoes. I’m especially excited about these because they combine elegance and panache (no less than Phoebe Philo is on board) with some podiatrist-friendly qualities.
We’re longtime proponents of swaggy orthopedic-vibed shoes, not only for their obvious comfort but for the compelling jolie-laide frisson a good pair achieves, deviating from overly constrictive standards of aerodynamic beauty.
Rarely, if ever, though, does it make sense to call shoes like this “sexy” — and these absolutely are: