The shame of showing up late
And life-affirming Latecomer Ws. Plus the coolest magazine, sick new clothes & more
There’s a trove of rugs, cushions, lamps, ceramics and more in our Home Goods Index
Check out our brand-new definitive Spyplane guide to the Best Japanese Clothesmakers.
Real quick —
New Spyplane shoes drop next week. They’re called the Moss Wanderers, and they’re a collaboration between Blackbird Spyplane, Helsinki’s Tarvas and Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty Worldwide.
For each pair, a single piece of repello suede is folded & stitched to create the upper, wrapped in rubberized leather, and then set on a low-profile Vibram sole. They’ll be available in person on Monday Nov. 10 at Ven.Space in Brooklyn, Neighbour in Vancouver, Rendez-vous in Paris, Nitty Gritty in Stockholm, Understory in Oakland and Maidens in Tokyo. They hit those shops’ sites Thursday Nov. 13. And they hit the Tarvas site on Friday Nov. 14, with an early-access window for our Classified Tier subscribers.
More details on the shoes, how they came to be, how they fit, etc., in this coming Tuesday’s sletter. If you’re in NYC, come to our launch party at Ven.Space on Thursday Nov. 13, from 6 til 9 p.m.
In today’s Plane we’ve got:
the strange shame & life-affirming delight of the Latecomer
a gang of very sick clothes under the radar
one of the coolest magazines about clothes (kind of) we’ve ever encountered
First up —
I ate this bowl the other day for lunch and I am gonna live forever:
I know what you’re thinking: “Jonah, that is a spectacular assemblage of radicchio and baby romaine dressed with Meyer lemon kosho, butternut squash in kasu, sauerkraut, radish with parsley & juniper berries and brine kanten, turnip-green kimchi, apple with umezu, kombo and basil seeds with basil vinegar, green beans with jalapeno kasuzuke, koji leeks, nettles with jalapeno mirin, fennel with preserved lemon, kale with date and kimchi brine, leeks with miso tamari, tokyo turnip with lime pickle, fennel & beet kasuzuke, radish green and dulse gomashio, goma dofu, avocado with koji garlic and blood orange kosho, and a cured egg. Your Spycrobiome must be thriving and your skin must be radiant right now. Where’s this from??”
To which I gotta reply, in order, 1) you’re damn right, 2) yes, I am glowing swagrobiotically, and 3) I find MFs like you real interesting bro… I don’t even think you really hungry like that tbh… but we’ll link to the spot below 😉.
The reason I bring it up, however, is that this place has been around for over a decade. Friends of ours have told us it’s incredible, that we’d love it, that we’ve gotta try it, etc., for years. And yet it took us until the other day to finally swing through, at which point I experienced the complex mix of pleasure and regret known only by that fascinating, often-misunderstood figure: the Latecomer.
We as a society tend to regard Latecomers as inherently worthy of disdain and/or pity. We’re inclined to mock them as slow-on-the-uptake herbs or, even worse, “bandwagon-hoppers.”
If you come to something late, you are often prone to feel bad not just because of this social stigma but, more to the point, because a place / thing you could have been enjoying for years has only just now entered your life, and you rue all those lost years you spent without it. You kick yourself. “Why was I sleeping? My life would have been so much richer if I had found this sooner.”
And yet!
The latecomer also feels a sense of rejuvenation… of new synapses crackling. You’re reminded of the obvious yet elusive truth that there are still discoveries left for you to make. That there are still new delights for you to stumble upon, which have been hiding right under your nose. And that, no matter how samey your days might feel at points — how stagnant, how exhausted of novelty — you have so much more pleasure and discovery lying in wait around you all the time.
Meanwhile —
Erin traveled to Paris for a quick trip last month, during which she secured one of the coolest, insightful, and blessed magazines about clothes (kind of) that either of us has ever encountered.
The magazine is coppable not just in Europe but also Canada and the U.S.: