Unbeatable summer sneaks!!
Limited-edition Mephisto SpyGiveaways and more MACH 3+ RECON
My mother, a.k.a. Mama Spyplane, is Française, so when I was a kid we spent lots of summers over there. I can still picture it: Young Spyplane le Petit Prince eating framboises with creme fraiche in a dusty bohemian flat near the Bastille at age 7, chasing them with black-market absinthe and praliné bars from a tiny chocolate factory on Rue St. Sabin … DJ-ing house parties in Pigalle with Daft Punk when I was 11 … Discussing life & love profoundly with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bernard “The Badger” Hinault, and homie from LUPIN when I was 13 …
Wow, all of this happened, and it was very cool.
Also?? I remember my mom heading to a magasin to drop these francs on fresh MEPHISTOS (they cost less over there) — the GOAT French walking-shoe brand, founded in 1965, whose sturdy stompers any jawnoisseur knows & respects …
So the other day, when Blackbird SpyFriend and Nordstrom menswear wizard Jian DeLeon asked if we were interested in hearing about a highly limited-edition Mephisto collab the store had in the pipeline, all I could tell him was, “Mais oui.”
Whipped up by veteran jawn designer Alex Dymond — whose resumé includes Supreme, Palace, Sky High Farms, IRAK, Vans and North Face — the collab in question is a subtly tweaked version of the Mephisto Match.
These kicks are limited as h*ll, and they are vraiment gaz. Alex did his d*mn thing!!
These go live this morning AND they are so gaz that we decided to “link and build Francophile-style” with Jian, Alex, Nordstrom and Mephisto on an elite blessing for the Cla$$ified SpyFriends today and today only behind the “unbeatable paywall”:
😮 We’re giving away 2 pairs of these ‘phistos PLUS some tie-in caps & tees (above right) that will not be released to the general public. We are talkin’ highly rare jawns top to bottom, ZUT ALORS!!
🛰🔭😎 Jonah & Erin
Also, we got Alex on the SpyPhone to tell us about freaking a French classic AND about general Mach 3+ design mindset!!
Blackbird Spyplane: Yr a New York City native, and you’ve done design work and creative-director type jobs for Palace, IRAK, Sky High Farms, North Face, and Pharrell, among a bunch of places — U also put out a very vibey-looking book about ‘80s and ‘90s snowboarding culture called Snow Beach a few years back. But before all that you worked at Supreme, which is such a fascinating (and fascinatingly opaque) place to kick off a career. What did you do there?
Alex Dymond: “I started in ‘05 and was there for a decade, till 2015. At first, I was in the shop, working in the New York store, but about halfway through I became more of an ‘accessory designer’ and was doing concept research and such. I helped evolve the ‘conceptual’ objects and accessories that Supreme puts out — I remember thinking about doing versions of things I associated with growing up in New York, like the mini-bats from Shea Stadium ‘bat day’ that graf writers would carry around with them, or like a Maglite flashlight that a kid in my school got hit with in a fight.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Classic ‘90s NYC skater-graf street weaponry !!
Alex Dymond: “Or, you know, it could have been something like a rubber Sky Bounce handball, which was such a fun game growing up, or Franklin batting gloves like Method Man used to wear — things that referenced New York culture, that had double meanings.”
Blackbird Spyplane: So tell me how you approach a project like “remixing” Mephistos…
Alex Dymond: “This project was more about”—
⚠️🛑⚠️🛑 OH WOW — today’s full newsletter is a ‘xclusie for our Cla$$ified-Recon Tier, who make this 100% reader-supported newsletter possible… ⚠️🛑⚠️🛑
To access the sletter and toss yr name in the hat for our Mephisto SpyBlessing, gently caress the upgrade button and float happy & carefree into the Spyplane Inner $anctum!
Have a great weekend ! If u get LONESOME u can strike up a conversation over frosty beverages with some cool strangers at a neighborhood park AND/OR peep our SpyTalk Chat Room, Profound Thoughts Depot, Master Jawn Index and gem-stuffed Blackbird SpyMall…
