We all need a splash of bad taste sometimes

Personal-style paprika, art prints & ceramics for the cribbo, and more

Welcome to Concorde, the Blackbird Spyplane “women’s vertical,” except it’s for everyone who is cool. Every edition is archived here.

Check out all the gems in our comprehensive new Home Goods Index.

The B.L.I.S.S. List, a helpful rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples from incense to underwear, is here. I just added a US-made balm that nourished my chapped lips.

Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.

Erin here! In today’s ‘Corde we’ve got:

• Sick art prints from an Italian painter slinging these still-life oils in L.A.

• Under-the-radar lines making shaggy microfleeces with versatile post-GORP vibes

• A Spyplane-beloved ceramicist’s Seconds Sale goes live TODAY

But first —

“Good taste” can bum me out. Don’t get it twisted: I have a Mach 7+ eye, as every installment of Concorde demonstrates. But too often, people use the term “good taste” to elevate an overly narrow, unimaginative, risk-averse sense of style. And that kind of antiseptic good taste has a lifelong track record of putting me to sleep!

I’ve always been drawn to people who follow a sense of risky wit wherever it leads them: bold over-accessorizers, cacophonous Pattern DJs, etc. But I’ll admit that in recent years — especially with the rise of the Good Taste Fetish a.k.a. hollow marketing cliché known as quiet luxury, and what can seem like its self-congratulatory cult of devotees — I’ve gotten tripped up about how I “should” be dressing. There’s a voice in my head that only grows louder as I get older, telling me to dress my age by toning things down. Telling me to telegraph to other people that I’ve “figured it out” by giving myself over completely to a state of solid blacks… reserved grays… a creamy beige swaddling oblivion. And let’s be clear, I’d be lying if I told you some of those creamy beige swaddling pieces don’t look nice!

But when I feel that voice winning out — threatening to drain all the color from my wardrobe — I reach for my smelling salts: a decade-old copy of D.V., the autobiography of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Nothing restores my vigor quite like it, and flipping through its pages the other day, I landed on this corpse reviver of a paragraph:

Of course, one is born with good taste. It’s very hard to acquire. You can acquire the patina of taste. But what [legendary interior decorator] Elsie Mendl had was something else that’s particularly American — an appreciation of vulgarity. Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. I’m a great believer in vulgarity — if it’s got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste — it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.

Well, that was just the ~sPiCe~ I needed! A reminder to cut against the restrained, “tasteful” grain. To explore and even embrace the queasiness that can hit us upon encountering a garment coursing with what Vreeland would call Vital Vulgarity. To go treasure-hunting in the “Ugly Genius Matrix” for Bad Taste Bangers.

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Speaking of which —

Here’s a clutch of new pieces that straddle the line between “tasteful” and spicy in their own unique way: