Subscribers to the Blackbird Spyplane newsletter never quite know what\u2019s going to arrive in their inbox. A post might be dedicated to business shirts found on eBay, an essay on the trend cycle in the internet age, an \u201cauntwave mecca\u201d in Niki de Saint Phalle\u2019s Tarot Garden or style interviews with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Rashida Jones, Andr\u00e9 3000 and Nathan Fielder.<\/p>\n
With its playful snapshots and crudely spliced Photoshop aesthetic \u2013 reminiscent of dial-up internet \u2013 the \u201csletter\u201d describes itself as \u201cyour No 1 source for style, culture, & \u2018unbeatable recon\u2019\u201d. The combination of ahead-of-the-game insidery insight, a goofball sense of humour and private language \u2013 a mix of streetwear slang such as \u201cjawn\u201d and \u201cswaggy\u201d and fighter jet lingo \u2013 has seen BBSP ranked highly in Substack\u2019s culture newsletters. Its subscriber numbers are in the tens of thousands and include the likes of John Mayer, Lorde and Ezra Koenig. The Instagram account, meanwhile, is followed by Lena Dunham, Mark Ruffalo, Rashida Jones and Ella Emhoff.<\/p>\n
BBSP was founded by the culture journalist Jonah Weiner and his partner, Erin Wylie, an Apple design talent scout, in April 2020. Weiner, the more vocal of the duo, describes BBSP\u2019s tone of voice as \u201ca filtering effect\u201d. Speaking on a video call, he says \u201cX out of 10 people are going to hit this wall \u2026 and their eyes will cross and they\u2019ll say, \u2018this is not for me\u2019, but for the Y out of 10 that stick around, they\u2019re going to feel in on something.\u201d<\/p>\n
The duo are long-term style obsessives, which gives them an uncanny ability to predict what might be in mainstream wardrobes six months from now. While he downplays a \u201ccrystal ball\u201d factor, Weiner does concede it happens. \u201cLast November we did a thing about silver sneakers, the running Y2K era kind of aesthetic,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was something that felt almost gross to put in the newsletter \u2026 Now one of the hottest sneakers out is the Asics Gel Kayano, which is exactly that kind of shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n
BBSP is an arbiter of what is in and out, but it has little of the snark found in fashion publications or sneakerhead forums (its chatroom, Classified Spytalk, is endearingly earnest). In the Spyplane universe, an \u201cif you don\u2019t have anything nice to say \u2026\u201d wholesomeness prevails: \u201cI almost have to bite my tongue when I\u2019m in newsletter mode, because we just lead with what we like and if we don\u2019t like it, it doesn\u2019t come up.\u201d The exception here is Amazon, regularly the subject of derision. Weiner describes the site as \u201can enemy in the Blackbird Spyplane cosmology\u201d.<\/p>\n
The laidback \u201cposi\u201d POV may be influenced by location. The couple is from the east coast \u2013 Weiner was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Staten Island, while Wylie is from outside Philadelphia (\u201cSide note, \u2018jawn\u2019 originally is Philadelphia slang,\u201d says Weiner proudly). They moved to Oakland eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Weiner says being in Oakland \u201callows you to encounter different ideas\u201d in terms of style \u201clike crunchy, old people in the organic produce section of the grocery store, wearing very Bay Area specific outfits\u201d. There\u2019s also a bicoastal synergy that plays to BBSP\u2019s advantage: \u201cFor any number of reasons, the cool kids in downtown New York, a lot of them want to dress like old crunchy people in the produce section of the Berkeley supermarket. So it\u2019s a happy coincidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
This outdoorsy Californian look \u2013 fleeces, hiking sandals, boonie hats \u2013 is often described as gorpcore or, to use the BBSP term, gorp. It\u2019s one that the newsletter has continually championed. But, with the look now on the radar of mainstream outlets like Vogue, is it over? \u201cThe original gorp moment actually happens in the early 90s, when you\u2019ve got kids in the New York outer boroughs, and then early Wu Tang videos and early Mobb Deep videos, catching wind of these brands like North Face \u2026 and wearing those clothes in an explicitly non-outdoor adventure context … I feel [it\u2019s] part of my own biography, and so I\u2019m eternally interested in wearing clothes like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it\u2019s this idea of personal style above all that BBSP tries to promote. \u201cFashion is a language and you can\u2019t get outside of language but I think that you can be more or less beholden to this manic whiplash mode of trend chasing,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe\u2019re interested in trends but it\u2019s more than \u2018This is the thing you need to care about this month.\u2019 It\u2019s more how do you weave [in] your own biography and things that you consider recurringly true about yourself and your interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The newsletter\u2019s profile is growing.<\/p>\n
BBSP released a small run of merch \u2013 caps and T-shirts \u2013 in 2022, and a spin-off newsletter, Concorde, helmed by Wylie, launched this month. Weiner says there is no \u201cgender coding\u201d at BBSP. Concorde is more focused on female readers but \u201cspeaking as a dude who\u2019s interested in clothes, I\u2019m interested in reading Erin because even if she\u2019s linking to, say, dresses or other garments that I don\u2019t personally wear \u2026 how she covers it is going to help me understand clothes better and dress better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiner is resistant to expanding much beyond the inbox. He says the pair make a small amount of money from affiliate links to eBay and bookshop.org, but any branded content \u2013 the bread and butter of many newsletters \u2013 would be considered extremely carefully. BBSP subscribers pay $5 a month or $50 a year which, even if only half of all subscribers pay, adds up to a decent sum. This has had an impact on the BBSP life, with Weiner now working on the newsletter the majority of the time. Was that always the plan? \u201cI did this interview with the painter, Issy Wood, and she does music on the side. She had a dalliance with a label and her top line takeaway was: don\u2019t professionalise your hobby, because anytime you do that you\u2019re reconfiguring your relationship to something that gave you a quote unquote pure thrill. On balance so far, the newsletter just still feels like a fun hobby, even if it\u2019s one constantly on my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
BBSP\u2019s essential style guide for autumn<\/p>\n
1 Wearing two button-up shirts at once. You\u2019ve spent spring and summer wearing one shirt like an ascetic. Now the weather is cooler, meaning you can get gluttonous with shirts. Is one shirt hanging open over the other? Are both buttoned? Are they both patterned? It\u2019s up to you.<\/p>\n
2 Wearing a hat over a hoodie. Another deceptively simple move that conveys just the right amount of what some people would call \u201cridiculousness\u201d but we correctly identify as \u201cjoie de vivre\u201d. It\u2019s an appealingly unconventional way to layer, and it creates a pleasing shape, especially but not exclusively with a bucket hat \u2013 knit beanies can be very cool over hoodies, too.<\/p>\n
3 Mizuno and Brooks running sneakers from the early 2000s into the early 2010s. A trove of overlooked epiphanies whose time has come.<\/p>\n
4 Buying nothing on Amazon or Doordash or Good Eggs, etc. Convenience is overrated. Get out of the house and be around other people \u2013 a small step with many beautifully and profoundly pro-social ramifications at a moment when companies want us to be alone all the time for some reason.<\/p>\n
5 Look at things through binoculars. Trees, songbirds, lichen growing in high-up places, farm animals if you live near a farm \u2026 These are all nice things to look at through binoculars, which means, among other things, time that you will not be looking at a screen, and a great way to experience the simple but powerful truth that sustained attention can be trippy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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