What the future holds
Too much heat, on the cool-clothes frontlines and elsewhere
Twice a year, a ton of our favorite clothesmakers from around the world fly to Paris.
They come loaded down with duffel bags and roller cases stuffed with samples from their forthcoming collections. Their primary objective is to present these samples to buyers from cool stores, in hopes the stores will place orders. The designers arrange their work in rented showrooms. They augment the fundamental purpose of these spaces, which is sales, with décor that will ideally add some context, some personality, some ambiance, some aura. Certain designers stage a runway show, too — adding styling, spectacle, theater, and 6-foot-tall baddies to the equation — though that’s less common among the smaller lines we tend to write about at the Plane.
This process is known as “men’s market,” or “Paris men’s fashion week.”
For the past 3 summers, Erin and I (Jonah) have been among assorted members of the media who come to see the clothes, too, talk with designers about them, and file dispatches, columns and reviews. From a designer’s point of view, buyers are the week’s core economic engine, and media help get the word out. From our point of view, it’s a pilgrimage to the cool-clothes frontlines, to see what the future holds.
We went again last week, and got more than we bargained for. A brutal heatwave sent temperatures soaring to ~104°F/40°C for four days straight.
The weather made everyone sweaty, tired, loopy and loose. I think it heightened the sense of camaraderie, on some “we’re all in this together” s--t. But it also made the notion of spending a week looking at racks and racks of garments feel even more farcical than it usually does. When you’re that hot, the last thing you’re inclined to think about is layering your body with fabric — this was weather to make you reappraise the essential purpose of clothes. And since the apparel industry writ large is a major polluter and contributor to the climate crisis, the heatwave also lent a palpable, pre-apocalyptic urgency to a question Erin and I found ourselves periodically asking throughout the week, not for the first time: What are we doing here?
There are numerous knotty contradictions between the slow, artisan-leaning model of clothesmaking we value here at the sletter, and the global context in which that approach necessarily unfolds circa 2026. As the most popular style & culture newsletter in the western world, we embody some of these contradictions ourselves, sending out intel on small makers to a worldwide readership who can theoretically cop the clothes thousands of miles away from where they were made. Even when there isn’t a heatwave, these contradictions come into sharp relief at Paris.
A small number of designers we f--k with simply give fashion week a miss. I admire the Spyfriends at James Coward, for instance, for managing to sell their clothes to several of the planet’s coolest shops while never coming to Paris once. They mail out packets with pictures, descriptions, and fabric swatches, and it works.
For the first few years of this newsletter’s existence, we skipped Paris, too. We came close to skipping it this year, and in some absolute sense, maybe we should have. But we decided that too many people we’ve come to love would be there, bringing too much great work they’d spent months devising. If we stayed in California, we sensed, we’d regret missing the opportunity to see them all in one place, and to meet clothesmakers whose work we’ve never seen before.
Also? We threw another party in the street with our friends at Neighbour and Lady White Co., open to all, where we knew the vibes would be mellow & sublime. We emerged from the week fried, tired, and stoked, eager to fill Spy Nation in on:
Important developments in swag footwear
Staying compliant with the rules & regulations of Cool Shorts Rocking
Colors that are popping
Cool people wearing cool pants
Jacket news
Collections from Spyfriends including Evan Kinori, Man-tle, Unkruid, Yoko Sakamoto, Tender Co., Small Talk, Auralee and more
The most ghoulishly depressing garment of the week
And more unbeatable recon.
The full report is a ‘xclusie for our Classified Tier Subscribers, who enjoy a better life in the Inner Sanctum, and whose support we depend on as an independent media miracle.
Let’s get to it —
KEEPING THE OLD WAYS ALIVE — MYSTERIOUSLY
This is the enigmatic designer Yoko Sakamoto’s hand…
At her excellent eponymous label, Sakamoto works often with natural-dye experts around Japan. Not long ago, she launched a semi-pseudonymous sub-label called Mark.S — we wrote about it last fall, here — with an emphasis on natural fibers and dyes. Whereas the clothes under the Yoko Sakomoto shingle tend to apply these techniques to clean, understated, modern styles, Mark.S can get a little crunchier with it.
Sakamoto likes to stay out of the spotlight. She asked that we not take her photo, nor that of her husband and co-designer. She asked that we not photograph any of the clothes nor the extremely dope footwear on display, either. And after telling us about the unlikely path she took to designing clothes and launching her own line, just over a decade ago, she asked that we not print any of it.
“I want to put the focus on our clothes, and on the people who make them, not on myself,” Sakamoto explained through a translator. Then she played us the video above, shot at an indigo-dyeing operation she works with just outside Tokyo.
LONDON’S SICKEST SMALL BRAND WHIPPED UP A GREAT NEW JACKET… AND NAMED IT AFTER YOUR BOY?
• London’s Sono, whose co-founders have designed for places like Lemaire and The Row (you can read our interview with them from earlier this year), developed a capacious new stand-collar jacket using a papery, high-density cotton, pictured A. below right. It was inspired by a piece of ‘80s era USSR Olympic Gymnastic Team kit. When Sono name a piece, they do so alliteratively: “Bo Bomber,” “Dora Dress,” etc. And wouldn’t you know it, they named this new style the “Jonah Jacket.” It looked fantastic, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that ~every store that came through their showroom had it among their selects. Jonah approves 😌.
NO GRUNGINESS = DIMINISHED SAUCE
• When you think of Auralee, you might envision a certain pristineness, because of their beautiful, tasteful, put-together-looking clothes. But don’t get it twisted: When we linked with Auralee designer Ryota Iwai one afternoon, pictured B. below left, he was looking great in a tattered vintage Interview tee and cut-off chinos (plus a tiny vintage women’s Cartier Baignoire). A little grunginess is your friend.