The coolest color you can wear in 2024
We're calling it: The year of deep muddy YURPLES
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— Jonah & Erin
We can’t tell you how often people hit us up to say, “Blackbird Spyplane, two-part question: 1. What fire s**t is coming next? and 2. Are you ever afraid your opinions are too correct for this screwed-up, topsy-turvy modern world?”
These Qs feel especially relevant here at the start of 2024, when we can’t help but project our signature “unbeatable-recon gaze” out toward the fog-covered landscape of the coming year and make Wise Spyplane Predictions about what’s headed our way.
To be precise, though, they’re not predictions so much as proclamations, because it truly doesn’t matter whether they “come true” in this imperfect plane of existence we call life — they are so irrefutable on a higher metaphysical level that, in a way, they are always already true the moment we make them, on some Biblical “Past Prophetic Tense” s**t.
That’s what it means to be “too correct,” it’s why Spy Nation f**ks with us, and we’re never afraid of it.
Case in point: After months of letting the idea germinate, tracking many indicators, and speaking with fellow Mach 3+ clothes-rockers, we are ready to proclaim here and now that the sickest color anyone will rock in 2024 is DEEP PURPLE.
We’re talking muddy plums, loamy raisins, grey-soaked eggplants, earthy-a** magentas, dusty grapes, and other purped-out hues so ambiguous in their purpleness that some people don’t even think they are purple (but they are.)
Deep YURPS have been on our radar as a color to watch since last spring, when Tender Co. dropped a small fleet of beautiful natural-dyed 16 oz. muddy-purple denim joints.
“This color,” I (Jonah) thought to myself, “feels pleasingly unusual and will help an outfit pop, but with a richness, subtlety and zero off-putting / loud / try-hard / what-are-you-15-years-old-have-some-dignity chromatic excess…” Three of the Tender joints are pictured in the bottom row below.
Soon afterwards, I asked Spyfriend Saager Dilawri of Earth’s Coolest Clothing Store, Neighbour, to name “the next brown,” and he picked dark purple unprompted, citing as a reference his own pair of extremely ambiguously purple Our Legacy Vast Cut “lumbercheck” jeans pictured above top left, which he described as perceptibly purple only up close and only from certain angles at that.
Looking at pics I was dubious that they were purple at all, but I should have known better than to second-guess Saager, because as you can see, the Photoshop eyedropper tool scientifically confirms that the DEEPEST OF YURPS is in the mix:
By the time autumn rolled around and Evan Kinori came through the sletter to preview some of the clothes he was most stoked to put out for fall, I was happy to see that one of the fabrics he spotlit was a muted but luminous dark-grey-purple corduroy, as seen on the jacket & pant set above top right, and on the cords I’m rocking all the way up top…
And get this: those pieces were not originally supposed to be purple!! The original samples were way more grayish-taupe — I’ve seen one of them firsthand. But wouldn’t you know it, after the fabric went into production in Japan and arrived in California to be cut and sewn into slappers it had taken on a quiet but undeniably alluring YURPLE cast.
You could call that a happy accident, but by our lights this suggests the workings of a Divine Hand: G-d wanted these jawns to be purple.
Let’s get one thing clear: Why are we all in on dark purple right now?
The key lies in the outfit I’m rocking in the collage above, bottom right, which I put together last year to help illustrate the layering powers of cuff-stacking: a purple Tender jacket (before I gave it to Erin because I shoulda sized up and it fits her better than it fits me) over a beige mohair Auralee sweater and brown mud-dye Visvim hoodie with black pants.
Recently, I — like many Mach 3+ clothes enjoyers — have been going O.D. with the earth tones. I make no apologies, earth tones rip. But what this particular fit reveals in its specific chromatic pleasantness is that a nice dark purple can not only play very nicely with blacks, it can elevate earth tones outright — giving them a sharp and invigorating tug back from the brink of too-“tasteful” boringness.
And what’s more, layering a deep purple against earth tones bespeaks a wisdom, confidence, and just the right degree of boldness. Whereas rocking earth tones alone can (in some cases) suggest a timidity and fear of color… And 2024 is no time for fear !!
BTW Erin has zero color timidity and, as pictured way up top, she’s been rocking this “blackcurrant” technical cotton-poplin unisex button-up from Our Legacy with ESPRIT — and, some times, with the killer brown jeans she shouted out in our Pants of the Year. (Check this coming Sunday’s Concorde for more on the ill vintage vest she’s wearing.)
Now, would a color in the crimson family perform similar work to dark yurple? Lord knows we’re still fans of the hue we’ve named Robby Müller Red. Maybe an earthy brick feels nice, like the color of the most recent Swoop jackets from Henry’s? Or how about a blue toward the navy / midnight end of the spectrum?
The answer is, sure, but if you literally combine the two and go with deep purple, the swag dividends are exponential: more versatile than red, fresher & more surprising than navy.
Here are more examples of the sauce magic that happens when you pair deep purple with earth tones. You see it with the Camiel Fortgens SS24 fit top left — how much that small hit of purple sleeve achieves. You see it with the master-level tonal swag ensemble from Zoë Kravitz top right (her hat is ambigously on the blue /purple border but we’re erring on the side of including it because this is A+ tonal excellence that any and all deep-purple-rockers should know about). You see it with how the ill purple English Patient cap silhouetted dead center above looks extra ill because of its brown-leather strapback closure. And you see it in just a thin but powerful band on the FW23 Ernie Palo striped button-up bottom left, originally seen at Colbo.
And above bottom right? Miuccia Prada and Willem Dafoe in 1995, swagging out in tandem while rocking complementary yurples — her dark violet dress layered over an aubergine top that echoes the brownish-aubergine wool of Dafoe’s suit. Mamma mia that’s good.
Camiel Fortgens is clearly feeling deep yurps — in addition to the fit above, peep his beautiful all-purple SS24 tracksuit below left. And he’s not alone among Mach 3+ designers in f**king with the dark-yurple vision. Above are three SS24 looks from Lemaire — runway-styling GOATS, among other virtues — that lean heavy on purple.
This deep yurple s**t works in the cold, it works when it’s warm, and it works in between. Here are new or recent joints from Arpenteur (the puffer on homie above and to the left), Sun Buddies (the sunglasses, here), Man-tle (the 1/2-zip hoodie), Paa (the mohair-merino beanie and the sweatshorts), Apuntob (the linen-cotton skirt set on ma), Ijji (the canvas sets above middle left), Timberland (the foldable camp shoes, which we first wrote about last summer), and Gurus (the quilted house slippers)…
And of course, as those Timberland shoes and the English Patient cap above demonstrate, there’s a rich vein of secondhand deep-purple treasure to unearth out there. None more personally meaningful to me than the dark purple ‘90s-era North Face down parka above right, which my father — Papa Spyplane himself — bought from the legendary Tent & Trails in downtown NYC around 1995 or so.
Since it was purple, and not a Nuptse, and people lack his vision, he got it on sale. I just went on eBay the other day and found a ton of great purple TNF puffers, and wouldn’t you know it, this exact one was right there on page 1 of the results. As you can see in the pic way up top, I offered $50 and snagged it — enjoying proof that A) you never need to buy a new down coat, and B) G-d is truly rocking with purple!!
P🍇E🍇A🍇C🍇E til next time — Jonah & Erin
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Yes yes yes! Excellent call! I’m loving a good eggplant these days. Dharma trading’s procion fiber reactive dye in sequoia redwood yields some exceptional hues for anyone wanting to DIY.
It's giving Japanese yam. I'm in.