Where is the future now?
Our souls are in the soil
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In today’s Plane we’ve got:
Early access & Spyhomie rates on beautiful & blessed unisex fall clothes cut & sewn in the U.S. by one gifted independent designer from extremely rare fabrics that sprang from Gaia’s third eye
Ill new big jeans with a natural-dye finish
And more
But first —
We live in a time of dark and funky vibes, and the vibes in the U.S. this week are, if not actually funkier than usual, much more in-your-face about it. Since Blackbird Spyplane is a Pro-People and Pro-Earth Dope-Clothes & Culture Sletter, I wanted to start today’s edition with some quick thoughts on this score.
It’s very easy right now to feel horrible, unmoored, impotently rageful, and cynical about how any of it gets better. In part that’s because — to the limited degree that we regard politics as something we have any influence over — the model of engagement that’s been bred into many of us is to get extremely worked up about politics only as they manifest every four years in a single, massively important electoral showdown between two parties.
I also suspect that many people in Spy Nation who care about wealth inequality, the climate, healthcare, reproductive rights, Gaza, housing, and animal rights, among other issues, started to pre-mourn the results of this presidential race well before election day, because even though one outcome may have seemed better relative to the other, both promised abundant disappointment.
In that light, something burningly obvious is that the horizons of our political imagination, and the vectors of our political energy, have to expand far beyond the “I Voted” sticker — much the way they did for, say, ‘60s-era Civil Rights activists who literally could not vote their way to freedom and had to develop other, non-electoral avenues and techniques.
As I read around over the past couple days, I came across one short but powerful piece of writing on the subject of expanded imaginative horizons, from the sci-fi GOAT Ursula K. LeGuin. Specifically, the highly Spyplaney closing words in a short, poetic commencement speech she gave at Oakland’s own legendary Mills College in 1983:
“I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
Speaking of souls that sprout from the earth —
Longtime Spyfriends are familiar with Graziano & Gutiérrez, the Portland-based unisex clothing line, because we’ve been writing about their singular work since Plane Year One.
The kindvibed and wizardly Alejandro Gutiérrez — pictured below top left working the d*mn JUKI at the stu — still designs, cuts & sews every G&G garment himself. He favors trusty workwear-indebted shapes and natural fibers, primarily sourced from family farmers, weavers and dyers in Oaxaca.
Today, we’re offering Spy Nation exclusive early access to a bunch of beautiful new Graziano & Gutiérrez pieces for fall, some of which are collaged above and below.
On top of that, we’ve secured a special Spyhomie Rate on 4 G&G garments that Erin and I handpicked:
2 wide-legged deep-pleat-front trousers (above and below), one cut from U.S.-grown-and-woven 13.5 oz denim, the other from a 12 oz. one-wash organic-cotton-and-hemp blend that “ends up feeling almost like linen,” Ale says, over time. FYI this is a trouser style they first rolled out during a Spyplane early-access event in Fall 2020 (!) with some swaggy updates: “We made the leg roomier and stitched down the pleats, giving things a very unique look and making the trousers a bit more versatile.”
2 button-up shirts (above and below), cut from extremely rare natural-dyed / undyed color-grown — cottons…
These button-ups are extremely special. One “is made with a 100% organic cotton fabric hand-woven on a pedal-loom and naturally dyed using wild marigold and indigo” by the Khadi artisan collective in and around Sebastian Rio Hondo in Oaxaca’s Southern Sierra. “The wild marigold — Pericon — is harvested during the summer and used fresh, which gives a bright yellow color,” Ale explains. “The indigo is grown and transformed into dyeing powder in the Isthmus of Oaxaca. This textile was given a Pericon bath followed by an indigo bath, to achieve the subtle streaks of yellow and green hues throughout the fabric.” There is only enough material on hand for 7 of these.
For the other shirt, there’s indigo-dyed cotton plus fabric spun from naturally brown coyuchi — “a caramel-colored, very soft wild cotton indigenous to Oaxaca, farmed in the region for thousands of years.” If that reminds you of the dye-free, color-grown cotton of Spyfriend Sally Fox, please trust & believe that she has traveled to link & build firsthand with Khadi growers & makers. (There’s some FoxFibre® in G&G’s fall lineup, too.) “All of these fabrics take quite some time to weave and dye,” Ale tells us. “Just making enough for about 4 shirts can take almost 4 weeks, so we offer these pieces in very small batches.”
There’s other great clothes beyond that — and right now Spy Nation are the only people on earth who can access them. More details, and a Classified Passcode, are at the bottom of today’s sletter.
Real quick —
Speaking of fire small-batch big jeans, natural dyes and finding the soul in the soil: