You think you love it but you never wear it

So trade it with someone for a month

Sep 03, 2024

Our roundup of the Best Pants Out is here.

Check our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.

The Coolest Museum Shops are here.

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

Jonah & Erin

Give a gift subscription

Here at Blackbird Spyplane it’s no secret that our lives are rich & satisfying. In large part this is because we constantly think about Fire Life-Improving Procedures for the Maximization of Deep Enjoyment — or as we put it, going F.L.I.P. M.O.D.E.

And this is not just something to we do “for us.” Increasing the deep enjoyment across Spy Nation is what we are here to do.

Past F.L.I.P. M.O.D.E. installments have involved the soothing and mind-expanding powers of listening to long songs, and the flavor-boosting powers of showering herbs over everything…. Today? We’re talking clothes.

Photo of Busta Rhymes looking incredible in 1997 by Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images

We all have clothes we don’t wear much, because something about them feels off. They might be objectively beautiful and / or cool in the abstract, but when we put them on, we’re missing a certain ineffable click of satisfaction — so we hang them back up and wear a thing we always wear, because, unlike the other thing, this one feels instantly comfortable.

Now, when it comes to clothes, comfort is a property that could always use some interrogation. The simplistic, tempting yet ultimately incorrect take is that we should defer to comfort above all else. “If you feel good, you’ll look good.” This is smooth-brained hogwash.

I’m not doing the Civilized Style Rules Hardo thing about how you shouldn’t wear sweatpants all the time and go barefoot on airplanes (not that I disagree!) And I’m of course not saying that if a very sick-looking pair of shoes is too small you should wear them anyway and hobble around in pain.

No — what I’m talking about is a psychic / psychosomatic kind of discomfort, of the sort we discussed in a classic Spyplane Essay about how you should Get Into Fights With Your Clothes. Cases where “a garment feels fine physically, but we just don’t feel right wearing it. The more-adventurous clothes rocker sees comfort as a totem, and they will tell you that deferring absolutely and unbudgingly to comfort is an impediment to growth, discovery and the development of Mach 3+ swag — all of which involve periods of experimentation, re-calibration and, yes, discomfort. What about the virtues, this person might ask you, of ‘getting out of your comfort zone’”??

Sometimes when we fight with a jawn we are really fighting our own brains… and brain got hands

Once we’ve fought the good fight with a garment, however, and decided it truly ain’t meant to be, our options are straightforward: sell it, give it away, or — if we feel that our perception of it might yet change down the line, and if we have enough space and foresight — keep it in what Blackbird Spyplane calls the B.I.G. B.U.C.S. Library until their day in the sun comes.

HOWEVER — what concerns us today is another, more perplexing category of garment: one we love and feel great in and yet still don’t wear much.

This is what you might call an “abbondanza problem,” because people with normal relationships to getting dressed probably don’t own a ton of clothes like these. But any Mach 3+ clothing appreciator knows the poignant pang of opening up their closet and beholding, e.g., 6 fantastic pairs of pants — each one acquired with intention, each of which fits great and looks fire — and then choosing one of the 2 or 3 “heavy rotation hitters” you always wear, almost as a matter of reflex, and regretfully giving the others a miss.

Sometimes I wish I could wear all of my pants at once! But sadly that’s not possible. In fact, I’m likelier to go the opposite route and cop more beautiful pants, because our consumer culture tends to mire us in Acquisition Mode — focused on the ephemeral pleasures of coveting / obtaining what we do not possess — and prevents us from fully entering the deeper, anti-consumerist pleasures of Enjoyment Mode.

How do we turn off the fiend-mode COPPING reflex and settle happily into ENJOYMENT?

We’ve written about a few Remedies for Compulsive Copping that can help us escape this dynamic, but today’s F.L.I.P. M.O.D.E. is a technique we haven’t explored:

Trade clothes with someone for a month, player!

Pick out one (or several) of these fire & beloved yet under-worn garments. Ask someone who is roughly the same size as you do the same in their closet. Now swap the garments with each other — temporarily. Could be a month, could be two, could be half a year, how long is up to you.

This could be a romantic partner, or it could be a bestie you see all the d*mn time. The fundamental appeal in these kinds of cases is that you get to see your own clothes on someone else.

I know this works firsthand, because Erin looks better in most / all of my clothes than I do, so when she borrows something of mine, it often makes me see it in a new light and makes me wanna wear it even more.

But you could also swap with a friend who lives elsewhere, or a virtual homie you befriended on IG or a Discord server. Then you get to see your own clothes in someone else’s fit pics, which — while inferior to IRL chilling if you ask us — can also shake up & rejuvenate your relationship to the garment in question.

The other benefits of this kind of trade are manifold. You get to “vacation” in someone else’s clothes, which can be pleasantly transportative. What’s more, you get to set & enjoy a suspenseful countdown — whether it’s 30 days or 6 months — to a “slapper event horizon,” when the vacation will come to an end.

And the moment it does end, you know you will start a second vacation, reunited with your own clothes, which will return to you cloaked in novelty and suffused with longing, on some “absence makes the swag grow stronger” logic.

And zero money was spent in the process — except on USPS Priority Mail Shipping if the other person lives somewhere else, which is a small price to pay for a “Slapper Vacation.”

P😎E😎A😎C😎E til next time!

— J & E

You think you love it but you never wear it

So trade it with someone for a month

Discussion about this post