You might be different on the other side
A summer-knit Spygiveaway, the best underwear I've found, vintage mini totes, sick approach shoes & more
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.
You can find books Blackbird Spyplane recommends in our SpyBookshop. I (Erin) just finished Rachel Cusk’s The Last Supper, a memoir about tooling around Italy for 3 months, staring into the deep well of time (a.k.a. the faces of ancient statues) and eating gelato languorously. I always crave a summer travelogue and relished this one!!
— Erin & Jonah
Erin here, back with another ‘Corde. Among other delights, it includes our first-ever Concorde Spygiveaway, from one of my favorite independent stores, Beklina. I linked with Beklina mastermind Angelina Rennell earlier this year, popping into her new space near Santa Cruz, and we decided to bless ‘Corde Nation with some excellent new summer-weight-cotton knit dresses she designed.
I gotta take a quick moment to salute the inspiration behind the knit pattern — a semi-sheer lace-like design that nods to Angelina’s love for the wooden bead curtain she hung in the shop. “I don’t know why I love beaded curtains so much,” she said, “but they spark something in me...”
Us too! Who doesn’t feel beaded curtains? Because — to get *eThErEaL* real quick — what is a door if not a portal? And what is a curtain that hangs over a door if not a magician’s cape, signaling enchantment on the portal’s far side?? Imbuing the otherwise humdrum threshold with a crackle of mystery, intrigue and chance?
I’ve also felt that crackle when ducking inside restaurants in Japan where the entrances are hung with split-panel noren curtains. There’s a fraction of a second where you aren’t sure you’ll come out on the other side the same as you were before. Kids know this innately — it’s why they build blanket forts. So why shouldn’t we drape doorways in our homes as adults? Every time I go to Japan I vow to cop some noren for Spyplane HQ — next trip I’m finally going to make good on that vow.
Also in today’s Concorde:
I’ve overhauled my underwear rotation thanks to organic cotton pairs from a small new-to-me label
Mini-totes inspired by Concorde’s Favorite & Most Fittedest TV Show of the ‘90s…
A summer-sneaker update — featuring a pair to buy if you want to retire from the “cool sneaker” game entirely ??
Let’s get to it !
First up —
I recently had to face a sad truth: After many years, it was time for me to lay to rest a fantastic pair of underwear that had served me dutifully for longer than I want to disclose publicly 😉. I solicited recommendations for replacements from buddies, and Spyfriend Emily Keegin tipped me off to a line of organic-cotton underwear that comes in excellent colors (not too girly or garish), and in a range of cuts whose coverage waxes and wanes like the moon, but never crests above the navel. (Why have so many labels been making such high-rise underwear recently?)
I ordered a grip of them, and they’re super lightweight, cute and comfy — I put them on and I forget they’re there. I’m all in, to the degree that I’ve added them to our B.L.I.S.S. List of “Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples”— you can find them in the underwear section:
Meanwhile —
Back to Beklina — they’ve been a legend in the independent-clothes-selling game for 18+ (!) years, bringing lines I love like Anntian and Julia Heuer to the U.S.
Since 2009 or so, Angelina has also been designing her own textiles for clothes and housewares, and in the past couple of years she’s been making beautiful knitwear I can only call SUMPTUOUSLY RAMBUNCTIOUS? Pieces that are comfortable enough to just throw on, but with unlikely details like hyper-dimensional textures and zingy colors. I’ve highlighted favorites in Concorde before, mainly her slapping ballet flats and slippers (below, bottom row).
But there’s also summer travel-friendly knits, like an uncrushable hand-crocheted visor, knit scrunchies and hand-knit scalloped cotton crewneck, all pictured below, available in Beklina’s webshop.
Angelina just launched a new collection of soft, stretchy dresses (below) knit from Peruvian cotton she chose because it washes and wears really well. As I mentioned up top, the stitch pattern she designed was inspired by the wood-bead curtains at her shop, so she named it “bead lace.”
These are a great weight for warm weather — semi-sheer so you can catch a breeze, and they roll into tiny logs to fit inside a carry-on. Pack one of these on your summer vacation and you’ve got a nightgown, beach cover-up & day dress, all in one!
And yes — today we’re doing a Concorde x Beklina Spygiveaway, offering up 5 bead lace dresses to lucky Spyfriends in your choice of aqua or black.
If you’re a Classified Tier subscriber, toss your name, color & size into the Virtual Beret by smashing the button at the bottom of today’s ‘Corde — we’ll do a random drawing this coming Tuesday 6/4 at 10 a.m. PT.
One more reason to come behind the Recon Curtain if you haven’t yet!
Next up —
Here’s a fast-acting remedy for the doldrums: Watch literally any episode from the first three seasons of the fantastic British comedy Absolutely Fabulous, about two demented, pleasure-seeking fashion obsessives. (Once you get to season 4 it’s still very entertaining, but we’ve left the sweet spot if you ask me.)
This is not an under-the-radar show. And yet people do not talk about it the way they talk about SATC. Is it because of noxious anti-British prejudice? Is it because there aren’t any love interests? There aren’t really any main male characters… The only relationships these two care about is their codependent friendship and addiction to riding the highs of life until the wheels fall off — family, work, and obligations of any kind be damned! Re-watching episodes the other day, I was struck by how early they were with their satire: They were skewering wellness culture and greenwashing back in 1994.
And, O! The fits! The main characters, Patsy & Eddie, who both work in fashion, drip hard — in a beautifully buffoonish, totally committed way— wearing head-to-toe ‘90s Christian Lacroix, Vivienne Westwood, Katharine Hamnett, Moschino and so on. Bubble, Eddie’s hilariously incompetent secretary, wears outfits so OTT that she perpetually looks like she’s popped in straight from a night at Fabric.
Eddie’s daughter Saffy is supposed to be a repressed nerd but seen from 2024 I think she might be the swaggiest of them all: She looks like she shops at Chickee’s and (dare we say) reads Blackbird Spyplane?? I’m into her wooly hand-knit jumpers, quasi-orthopedic loafers, and extremely Aunt Wave earrings. The labels I could ID include Margaret Howell and Agnès B. Amazing.
I’ve saved so many screenshots to my phone I am now running out of iCl*ud storage!
It’s a vast sea of inspo. And in the very first episode my eye caught on one thing in particular, which you can find today secondhand plentifully: