The vintage workwear plug
Plus fit-envibening FLAIR, an under-the-radar Japanese line, IRL copping pleasures & more
Welcome to Concorde — the Blackbird Spyplane “women’s vertical,” except it’s for everyone who is cool.
The Concorde Cute Swag Index, a guide to everything we’ve covered, arranged by category, is here.
You can find books Blackbird Spyplane recommends in our SpyBookshop.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a comprehensive index of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — is here.
— Erin & Jonah
What’s up? ERIN BACK with a packed Concorde for you today. We’ve got:
an IG workwear shop for the Hot Ladies and Spyplane Broskis alike that you should be following for bi-weekly sales
a visit to one of our 35 Slappiest Shops
a sick Japanese line that’s been flying way under the radar
a big edit of vintage statement pins — just the thing to set your capacious overcoat (C.O.C.O.) apart from the crowd!!
and more unbeatable recon
But first—
Last month I mentioned I’ve been gravitating towards ridiculously embellished, ridiculously small reticule-type bags that are “like a little opera coat for your stupid phone.” Since then I’ve added the petite sac pictured in the banner art above to my collection. It’s truly absurd: a glass-beaded velvet pouch from the 1890s with a faux-tortoise lid made of celluloid, and a velvet ribbon tied in a bow that serves as the handle. Now, I’m not trying to over-sell you on these bags — I know they’re a peculiar dalliance of mine and if you want to be more broadly au courant / practical you can simply grab a lil Lemaire croissant … But I scored this on Etsy and had to share what came tucked inside of it: a postage-stamp-size black-and-white photo of three women, pictured above. What a thrill!
Molly Ringwald told me that what she loves about vintage shopping is “that I could find these things and imagine almost like a character who was wearing them — they were like stories to me.” Finding connections to the past through someone else’s once-cherished object is a big part of what has always driven my interest in vintage and thrift shopping. Discovering this photograph reminds me that I’m just a temporary custodian of all this stuff…
Now let’s get to it —
Last week I embarked on a special C.I.R.L.O.C. day-trip mission: To cop IRL at the recently opened physical store of Beklina, formerly online only, which you may already know as one of our 35 Slappiest Shops Across the Spyplane Universe.
Beklina’s been around for 18 years (!) but they were a strictly Internet-based concern until last October, when they took over a former stable with exposed redwood beams in tiny Aptos, CA, right near Santa Cruz.
I have been feeling Beklina’s independent-designer selection — Mach 3+ lines like Julia Heuer, Anntian, Baserange and Azur — and their great house line of clothes, shoes and accessories for ages. So I was stoked to meet founder / designer Angelina Rennell at the shop. And I was especially stoked to see the hand-crocheted glove flats that I wrote about last August in person. It’s increasingly harder to do, but you need to see and touch something to really know how it feels and how it makes you feel.
The crochet flats surpassed my expectations, and I copped them along with a pair of pull-on pants cut from a beautifully textured woven Japanese cotton that I hadn’t given a second look on the website because I.R.L. you see things that screens can’t capture!! (Both pictured on me above right).
Angelina told me the fabrics for the made-in-California house line pieces she designs are all sourced from Japan. And that her knits — including the glove flats — are made in the same places in Peru that Spyfriends like Lauren Manoogian and Rachel Comey use. She also let me know that there are more colors of the crochet flats coming, so keep an eye out for those…
Beklina is open to the public Fridays and Saturdays, and by appointment. More info here.
Wow —
If you’re remotely into stylish workwear you gotta smash the follow on this slept-on sub-10k-follower plug for vintage grails from L.L. Bean, Carhartt, Woolrich, Levi’s, and more.
This is the best one-stop shop I’ve found for heavy-duty canvas dusters and chore coats (the fashion renaissance of which we marked here), soft chamois shirts in a rainbow sherbet palette, oversized button downs, long wool overcoats and skirts, and perfectly worn-in baggy corduroys…