The wedding-fit inspiration no one saw coming!
Wildflowers at full speed, anchovy salads & other unbeatable party outfit prompts
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.
— Erin & Jonah
Real quick — recently interviewed me (Erin) about my lifelong relationship with thrifting — why I love it, how deep it goes in my family, and how it helped me develop my personal style. In our conversation I also share some of my favorite thrifting spots and recent scores. You can read it here.
‘Corde Nation, it’s that time of year when an abbondanza of Spyfriends come to me, asking, “Erin — What should I wear to a wedding?”
This can be a deeply vexing question. Getting dressed for a wedding, after all, is a diabolical combination of high-level opportunity and high-level challenge. On one hand, you get to bust out some special s**t and take an exhilarating little vacation from the familiar confines of your everyday comfort zone. On the other hand, of course, abandoning your comfort zone carries the risk of profound discomfort… One wrong step and what should have been pure fun (“I got dressed up to celebrate LOVE”) sends you into an existential vortex (who am I, does G-d care about us, why did I wear these shoes??)
For that reason, the most common wedding-fit advice tends toward risk-averse, one-size-fits-all generalities: Don’t overshadow the bride, don’t get nutty with the prints, don’t get racy with the hemlines, blah blah blah. This approach makes sense on the surface. Everyone’s different, so try and keep things as unaudaciously, broadly applicable as possible. But the downside is that such advice tends to be boring and uninspiring — and it leaves self-discovery and JOY on the table!
Concorde is not in the business of leaving self-discovery or joy on the table. If you are reading this, you are a cool, highly specific person, so our vibe is to offer you up some cool, highly specific prompts that provide guardrails against fit-bricking chaos while allowing you to venture in all kinds of unlikely directions and actually have a good time.
And O baby are we lucky to have a Cool Highly Specific Prompt Master on speed dial: Leigh Patterson, founder of
and creative studio Lucca. Leigh creates prompt-based journals that I’ve used for years and have recommended and gifted to many of my friends. Last year she helped us concoct a smash-hit wedding-fit sletter, supplying sly, incredible fashion koans designed to inspire sly, incredible guest outfits, and I did accompanying “unbeatable market work,” finding killer pieces to get your gears whirring…For today’s Concorde she came through once again with a set of zippy prompts and breezily chic “characters” for us to slip into.
Let’s get to it — !
1. Zuni Cafe's anchovy, celery, and parmesan salad as mindset/palette/way of life
Zuni Café has been a Bay Area legend in the culinary game since the late ‘80s, when Judy Rodgers, who trained in France and at Chez Panisse, took over the kitchen. The bistro vibes are always on point and just a bit surprising, as captured by this iconic salad: Bracing but refreshing, crisp but umami-ed out, and effortlessly beautiful on the plate. All of which turn out to be fantastic attributes for an outfit:
