Who Is Blackbird Spyplane? Jonah Weiner Erin Wylie Interview ·

01 Jan 0001, 00:00

In asking Jonah Weiner—who co-writes the menswear-cult-favorite Blackbird Spyplane with his partner, Erin Wylie—about his days before the newsletter, he starts, “I've cared about the arts broadly speaking, writing about the arts, and people who make things for a really long time, going back to being a kid when I was making movies with friends and drawing comic books. Worked on my student newspaper in college as an arts editor, and that became 20 years or so of being a magazine writer, learning how to do profiles and write about people.”

I was late to BBSP, as I’m afflicted with an unfortunate illness that causes one to resist good things when presented with them by the overly eager, annoyed to have not found the thing oneself. But as is often the case, there is a reason for the popularity and acclaim. It's possible I've never read anything as fun, dynamic, and yet equally forthright and prophetic. I won’t diminish the “sletter” with an attempt at defining it, but if you read this column regularly, I assume you might already be a fan of Jonah and Erin’s brilliant creation.

Here, Jonah and I discuss BBSP’s origins, his interviews with Andre 3000 and Jerry Seinfeld, gorp and its utility, dressing in the Bay area versus New York, personal style as a moving target, and the fetishization of uniform dressing.

Fit One

Christopher Fenimore

Sandals by MHL; Hemp elastic pants by Evan Kinori; Corduroy button upThe Row; Hemp jacket by Evan Kinori; Watch: 1985 GMT Root Beer on a brown leather NATO; Christo & Jeanne-Claude "The Gates" souvenir cap, vintage; Sunglasses by Saint Laurent.

Christopher Fenimore

Talk to me about the leadup to Blackbird Spyplane, and why you decided to start writing it.

JW: Essentially 2020 comes, we’re at home, and the newsletter is a pandemic project with my partner, Erin and I. We've both cared about clothes and style for a really long time, and people who make things. She works for Apple as a design scout for the industrial design team. Whenever we've traveled, going back long before the newsletter, [we’d seek out cool shops by local makers]. The newsletter just seemed a very chill, informal, low stakes way to write about these things that we cared about that were adjacent to but never our main jobs. It actually just turned three this past month. What it has in common with my work is I've talked to some of the same people that I wrote profiles about for the newsletter, but here it's always just, "Tell me about a special thing you own that is meaningful to you and unique," as opposed to, "Tell me about your art and how you make it."

Fit Two

Christopher Fenimore

Uneeks by Keen Japan; Levi's 550s, Vintage; Mud-dyed button-up by Evan Kinori; Cotton workshirt by Oliver Church

Christopher Fenimore

How have you chosen to take your content deeper, and how would you describe Blackbird Spyplane to the uninitiated?

JW: In part, it's just heavy blog vibes. It's not written in the same voice that I write with for The New York Times. There's a hyped-up persona. There's a lot of fun with language, a lot of fun with slang. I think that the notion there is that X out of 10 people who show up, their eyes are going to cross and they're going to think, "I don't get this. There are weird Photoshops. There's a weird person writing in a lot of bold in all caps, in semi-inscrutable language. I'm out of here." But for the Y out of 10 people who stick around, they're going to feel like, "Oh, I'm in on something out of the ordinary. It's not like style or arts writing elsewhere.” One thing that I think helps draw people in, hopefully, is that it's like that voice and that style is in the service of enthusiasm, just being hyped up about shit, celebrating people who make interesting things. When it's interviews, it's not about, "Oh, here's some fire shit to cop. It's not, “Jerry Seinfeld tells you the five things you need in your closet." It's asking people about cherished things of theirs where it's not really about anything other than a personal value or significance. Maybe one of the implicit things, to the degree that it's possible, is that we have a certain anti consumerist bent to the newsletter. You probably own 10 things already that are worth nothing to anyone else, but they're priceless to you. We're interested in the way that objects become talismans like that—celebrating these objects that become invested with stories and personal emotions. It's hard [to be succinct] because in a way, the newsletter changes what it is week to week. There are essays trying to grapple with how we relate to consumer goods. It's carrying you through it. It's a couple people who have something verging on expertise. We have a sense that we are clued into shit that's cool and shit that's interesting and we're just trying to find that and celebrate it a couple times a week.

Has your mission for the newsletter changed at all? How did you grow it from the ground up to having Andre 3000 on the newsletter?

JW: Andre was in week five, so thankfully that came early. We're really lucky word spread and it got an audience and people like Andre and people Jerry [Seinfeld] came through pretty early on. In terms of growing it, yeah, it's hard to say, we are sort of anti-growth. I feel like there's this fetish for scale usually it's places with investors. The mission has stayed the same. If anything though, we realized slowly over time that we can expand to do a whole newsletter about an author that we're really into. Early on would be, “we haven't demonstrated. We haven't earned people's trust enough to just go long on how I love the early 20th century British humorist, P.G. Wodehouse.” I guess Erin and I are the glue that holds it together. It's this place where we can interview Emily Bode one week, do a roundup or do a piece saluting what we think is the sickest New Balance of the year the next week, and then write something about P.G. Wodehouse the week after that and it's somehow coherent and readers are like, "Yeah, I'm on board for all three."

Fit Three

Christopher Fenimore

Wave Rider 10 sneakers by Mizuno; Double pleat pants by Evan Kinori; T-shirt by Savoy pizzeria; Chore coat by James Coward; Belt by Kika.

Christopher Fenimore

The jargon is just out of control. Where do you find inspiration for Blackbird Spyplane content and vernacular?

JW: It's probably a combination of an insane interior monologue that's just been running in my head for a long time. I can't tell you why that garbage is in my brain, but it's just there, bouncing around. There’s probably a degree of a New York childhood. Any region has slang, but obviously in New York, you just walk around like you're going to hear people saying things in unconventional ways. The friends over at Throwing Fits. You can listen to one episode of that and you might start calling clothes jawns. Obviously, the genealogy goes back to Four Pins, who took it from Philly slang. It's just a soup of garbage in my brain. I'm just ladling out bowls week to week. I love writing. I just love having fun. If you like putting words together, I think a sick thing about being able to write what's effectively a blog is that the house style can be as off the wall as you want it to be. For me, it becomes a creative act in itself. “How can I say shit that's going to be fun for me and be fun for people,” is probably what it boils down to. Keeping shit lively. You can read The New Yorker if you want that voice. You can read The New York Times if you want that voice. A lot of style writing can feel so robotic and so dead. "We're obsessed with these. This is what you need in your closet." I'm going to keep using that formulation, but there's this kind of stock, "We're totally obsessed with these jeans." You're not obsessed. Imagine if you were obsessed with jeans, that would be weird. I mean, some people are. There are some jeans obsessives, but I know you can be obsessed with one or two things. Style writers have to pretend they're obsessed with every 10 things they write about. A lot of it too, is wanting to have a voice that related to clothes and style, just in a totally different kind of register and vocabulary than we're accustomed to seeing in a lot of shopping guide styles.

Fit Four

Christopher Fenimore

Sandals by MHL.; Linen pants by Lauren Manoogian; Oakland A’s-Raiders tee, bootleg; Jacket by Margaret Howell; Brooch by Bode; Cap by Man-tle.

Christopher Fenimore

You can’t dish out advice without looking like you know what you’re talking about, but you’re a stylish dude. What style lessons have you learned through the years by trial and error?

JW: Part of it is just getting older and trying to always thread that needle between not wanting to look washed and boring, but also not wanting to look washed and try-hard. If you care a lot about clothes, part of it is finding, "Okay, what is an objectively sick garment that just doesn't work for me and doesn't mesh with me?" Maybe a lot of developing personal style is realizing that something is sick, but not for you. And probably just getting older, not even in terms of getting wiser, but just in terms of just realizing there's more gray in my beard and I just can't pull off some of the zanier shit that I tried to when I was younger. It's about toning shit down, focusing on things that are a little less muted, so it's not just about a bold print or a bold color, but gravitating towards things that register as nice and ingenious, but not off the wall. I'm not trying to wear the equivalent of the bright yellow Miata midlife crisis purchase. My style generally is also pretty rumpled and informal. I've never been a super formal dude. I'm wearing a hemp suit because it can accommodate rumples. I like nice fabrics, but they can't be nice in a precious way. All the shit that I wear, I'm not pressing. I'm not ironing stuff. And certainly, living in the Bay has also driven that home because it's not a fashion part of the country. And if you step out looking the way some people look in New York—and look great in New York—you're just going to get some strange looks. You're going to be out of place in the day. So, even wearing the hemp suit, I'm wearing it with a baseball cap and some sandals.

I feel that way living on the North Fork. It's New York, but it's rural, and I have toned down my wardrobe a bit having moved there. I wouldn't say I changed my personal style in any way, but things are way simpler these days. And it's all about comfort, too. In my 20s, it was figuring out. I definitely bought things, whether they worked or not. The journey is figuring out the silhouettes that do and don’t work for you and your life.

JW: It's a moving target because you're never fixed. A lot of people want the fantasy of a uniform. It's going to work for some. It's like there's this contradiction where the people who care the most intensely about clothes simultaneously want to be done with it. They're like, "I want to stop thinking about it." That's just a really funny tension. You have to realize you're a moving target.

What do you look for in a brand or designer in featuring them on your site?

JW: The answers aren't always the same. There's a lot of overlap. In terms of Blackbird Spyplane, generally speaking, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but a lot of what we're gravitating towards is people who are making things more or less off the beaten path. There are so many people right now doing shit at really small levels. Oftentimes, literally one person hand making everything and that's a lot of the people that we write about. Even as lines get bigger, we're looking a lot at independent lines, just people working at—relatively speaking—small scales. In part, that’s because we're not interested in being unthinking, another additional marketing arm of the fashion industry, but actually keeping the shit human scale. Anyone at the highest level of the industry will tell you that they relate to stuff like that, but it just gets harder and harder, the bigger of an operation you get. When I saw leaked photos last year of the 1906r from an Eastern European New Balance Instagram, I thought, "These are sick." And we did a piece saying, "This is the dopest New Balance of the year." I think we were probably a year early on that. I think now, people are [realizing how dope they are]. That’s not a small thing. That's as mass produced as it gets, but there's still room in the newsletter because sometimes mass-produced industrial design is going to create genius shit.

Fit Five

Christopher Fenimore

Sneakers by Salomon x And Wander; Pants by Lemaire; Button-up, overshirt by Casey Casey; Sunglasses by Saint Laurent.

Christopher Fenimore

How about for yourself when you're making a new purchase?

JW: I'm definitely in a muted kind of phase—just earth tones, not a lot of crazy colors, natural fibers for the most part. And so, trying to weave that in. Being from New York, I got into this '90s moment of what was not called gorp then, but it's called gorp now, and which a lot of people associate with the newsletter. It’s sort of like New York kids rocking North Face jackets and Mountain Smith bags and Merrill boots. Back in '90s era in New York, there's obviously kind of a corollary with living in the Bay now, where a lot of those lines were actually born. People are outdoors a lot. Erin and I are outdoors a lot. We go on hikes a lot. Incorporating some of that crunchy outdoor core shit into pieces that don't necessarily read technical at all. I don't know, a nice linen button up with some weird jeans, totally where I'm at right now.

If you have to wear one outfit for the rest of your life, what would it consist of?

JW: It's funny, truly, I think that it's almost like I have to go back and I either could bullshit through this or I could just dodge the question. I've realized, actually, this is a question that I've thought through a lot. And I even did this thing for the newsletter where I wore one outfit for an entire month. It was in February. Part of the experiment was, “Do I even have an answer to the question that you just asked me?” I realized I don't. I got sick of those clothes. My eye wanders. You change. It would be like asking a comedian, "If you could only tell one joke for the rest of your life, what would that one joke be?" And the person's going to say, "I can't. There's no one joke. I'm a comedian, you come up with new material." I'd have to come up with new material.

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Who Is Blackbird Spyplane? Jonah Weiner Erin Wylie Interview

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