The ultimate Swagrifice
Refusing to be a "comfort cuck," plus a wealth of unbeatable recon into jackets, shoes, vintage digital cameras & more
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We just published two sletters about Summer Suits — Erin’s is here, Jonah’s is here.
First things first—
We’re throwing a party in Paris later this month with our friends from Neighbour and Lady White Co.
We’ll have wine and other beverages, and music selected by Yu Su. We envision a “people in great moods spilling out onto the sidewalk enjoying beverages in the early-evening breeze with music in the air” kind of scenario.
Join us if you’re in town. It’s Wednesday, June 25th, from 6pm until ~9pm or so, at 51 Rue Volta in the Marais.
Wow —
Speaking of parties, at the function we co-hosted last month in Oakland with Understory and Archie, mad people came out looking mad cool. But one dude in particular looked cool while rocking a plump Evan Kinori x Man-tle tweed down puffer even though it was a sunny day in the mid-70s.
I felt a little balmy myself rocking a spring-weight Auralee wool-canvas jacket, so I could only imagine how this king was managing decked out in full-on winterwear.
The reason I bring this up is that a sauce-agnostic reasonable person would read the above and say, “Jonah, you were wearing a wool jacket, this dude was wearing a puffer — why was anyone at this party wearing anything but a t-shirt??”
But the sauce-aware, blessedly unreasonable Mach 3+ Spyfriend knows exactly what was going on: The Swagrifice.
This is a term I wish I came up with, but it came to me via Wes from Understory, who got it, in turn, from a friend of his. “I was out taping my buddy skating one time, and he was wearing these new Jordans he wanted to clip up in, even though they’re horrible shoes for skating and they hurt his feet,” Wes explained.
“He told me, ‘Sometimes you gotta make the Swagrifice.’”
In our deadened and disenchanted society, the default impulse is to look at someone rocking something “ill advised” from a strictly rational perspective and deem them, e.g., a “fashion victim” or “season pusher” (derogatory). But the concept of the Swagrifice casts such behavior in a more properly noble light: Sometimes the divine imperative to look fly transcends the earthbound prerogatives of total personal physical comfort.
There’s a balance, of course. If you look miserable / like you are in severe pain while rocking the inappropriate garment in question, that does not count as a swagrifice, because there is going to be a surplus of suffering and a deficit of swag in the equation. That’s the difference between the Virgin Sacrifice vs. the Chad Swagrifice.
Different people will necessarily draw the line different places. For instance, I run hot, and there is no way I could have been rocking a puffer like this dude, who somehow looked chill sauntering hither and yon with nary a droplet of perspiration pon his brow.
A down jacket in May is, to be clear, an extreme move. But here at Blackbird Spyplane we respect anyone who tests a boundary. As I put it in a sletter a few years back about Getting Into Fights With Your Clothes, comfort can become a totem, and deferring to it “absolutely and unbudgingly” when you get dressed “is an impediment to growth, discovery and the development of Mach 3+ swag — all of which involve periods of experimentation, re-calibration and, yes, discomfort.”
Meanwhile —
In today’s Spyplane we’ve got:
BOLD RED WATCH 2025 continues with a sick corduroy-collar jacket,
new platonic-ideal tan sneakers and…
… sick summertime New Balances so streamlined they are on the verge of disappearing,
a banging 20-year-old palm-size digital camera that looks snazzy as hell and takes “crazy sharp” pictures per a trusted photographer Spyfriend, which if you are lucky you can cop for less than a hundo on eBay, and
more unbeatable recon.
Let’s get to it —