STYLE REPORT: United EconomyPlus

This one has real models. I'm not joking around anymore!

A few months ago, I posted “STYLE REPORT: The Verizon Store” as a gimmick, a bit, a vehicle to complain about the horrors Verizon puts us all through without sounding eighty years old. I followed it up with “STYLE REPORT: DraftKings Sportsbook Wrigleyville” as an excuse to attempt a bit of gonzo journalism and explore what exactly goes on in a dark corner of Chicago that’s always terrified me.

The style reporter mindset, though it started satirical, became a useful exercise in dealing with boredom and discomfort. It was something to do with time that would be wasted anyway: focus on what people are wearing there. Why are they wearing it? Why did they choose to wear it here? What effect does it have on the environment?

In effect, this jokey fashion reporting has changed my life— so much so that I’m now the world’s premier fashion reporter by some accounts, and I am officially making enough fuck-you money off my STYLE REPORTS that I could glamorously upgrade my recent ten-hour flight from Houston to Rio de Janeiro.

So today, I’m not stuck in a soul-sucking liminal space. I’m riding in fucking style. The limousine of the skies, or at least the Uber Black of the skies: seat 30A on United flight UA129. That’s EconomyPlus to you mortals, which is the third-best section (out of four) on a United long-haul flight.

But, though I paid $230 in miles for the upgrade, I’d say that seat only provided somewhere around $180 worth of comfort. I’d have to make up the other value somewhere else: in style inspiration.

So what were people wearing on the redeye from Houston to Rio de Janeiro? Was there enough style inspo to be found here to make the upgrade worth it? Or will this be the day Ideas Guy’s style column crashes and burns, because I spent the entire budget on a minor seat upgrade and don’t have anything to show for it?

Joggers

Tall guys

Our style journey starts when I get the notification that my flight’s boarding. I’m group four, weirdly, even though I am extremely wealthy and in about the 200th-most-prestigious seat on this plane. People are swarming the gate in the vultureish way they always do when their group hasn’t been called yet but they want to be first in line when it is.

So I stand there, in the treelike rings of people surrounding God’s chosen Boarding Groups 1 and 2, waiting my turn. My earbuds are out. I’m poised like a track runner waiting for group 4. This also means I’m picking up the noise of everyone else.

Next me, decidedly not a boarding announcement, I hear a guy saying “Nooo wayyyyy bro what are you doing here?” The source of the voice turns around and daps up a guy directly behind me. My eyes stay trained on the jet bridge.

“What are you doing here?” asks the guy I haven’t yet seen.

“Oh, you know, I’m a single guy, I’ve gotta go down to Rio, you know what I’m sayin’?” (This is where I vomit in my mouth. If I was brave I would have turned around and unleashed it on him.)

“Nice,” the other guy laughs it off gently.

The sex tourist is now peppering his new buddy with questions. “Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. This is my first time in Rio, though. What have you been up to? I see you doing some modeling on Instagram, I see you, I see you.”

“Yeah, I’ve done a couple shoots.” Obviously my interest is piqued and I’d like to turn around to get a look at this guy, but I can’t at this point. Is he a real model? Or did he just take some photos one time with a photographer friend? That could mean anything.

“That’s cool, that’s cool. Where are you staying? I’m in Copacabana…”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere downtown I guess?” Model guy seems to be trying to shut it down. It’s a tough scene to watch, and I’m not even watching. Eventually the two men board directly in front of me, and I can make my first style observation of the evening.

What does a model wear on the plane to Rio? It turns out that tall guys’ plane fashion choices are less informed by their job (even if it is Model) and more informed by their height. The model must be six-five, and his joggers are not fitting. That ankle cinch is sitting way too high! Too much shin exposed, even if it is covered by a long sock!

The guy sitting beside me in EconomyPlus is also tall— he was probably forced to pay for the upgrade because of his height, not just out of an abundance of flush cash from fashion reporting like your glamorous narrator— and he’s also wearing too-short joggers. It’s an epidemic. A really, really minor epidemic that’s ultimately not a huge deal, like the common cold, but an epidemic nonetheless.

GET THE LOOK: Joggers that are slightly too short. If the joggers fit you well, leg lengthening surgery.

AWAY Luggage

Gringos

Pot clocking in for my ‘calling the kettle black’ shift here¹, but the two girls with matching pastel AWAY suitcases waiting for flight UA129 were truly the homing point for all other Americans.

I wasn’t standing too far from these girls, and watched as they got approached three times within ten minutes by other nervous Americans saying “Are you from the US? How do you feel about this visa situation?”

By the third approach, the girls were visibly annoyed— and I don’t mean to victim blame, but really they should not have showed up with pastel AWAY luggage. AWAY luggage is adorable and convenient and well-made, I think! Just know if you’re carting it around, you’re basically waving the stars and stripes high above you.

I shouldn’t be talking as if I’m on any sort of high horse— I’d go on to have the opposite problem often on this trip (likely because I’m brunette and/or my body is tea) where people would assume I was Brazilian. I was equally flattered and terrified every time someone would approach me and start going absolutely off in Portuguese and I’d just have to smile and nod.

Or maybe I just wasn’t approached in the airport because I had the uppity scowl of someone sitting in EconomyPlus, not Economy like the rest of the plebs.

GET THE LOOK: If you want to be approached in the airport, get some Away luggage and fly to a place where Away luggage is not common; you’ll basically be the American consulate for all people in a five-hundred-foot radius. If you don’t want to be approached in the airport, just carry any other luggage.

Divalicious accessories

The flight attendants

I’m a decently seasoned traveler, but some nerves started to hit me as I prepared to board. Sue me! I’m human. I was boarding a plane to a continent I’d never been to for one of the craziest parties in the world. What was I doing? How did I get here? What if my friend’s flight got delayed and we couldn’t meet up at the airport as planned?

And then I stepped onto the jet bridge and saw that it was decorated, up and down, with Party City Carnaval decorations. A couple cheesy little $5 decorations almost made me melt. Everyone was so excited to go to Rio and celebrate! How festive! How fun! I immediately texted pictures of this to all my friends and family because I was so incredibly charmed by it. An incredible start to my charmed EconomyPlus journey.

The crew were decked out in all I’m sure their dress code would allow: a few beads, headbands, little accessories. Everyone on this crew was festive, ready, in the Carnaval spirit! My nerves dissipated, and I happily pivoted to my next priority: getting some shut-eye to prepare for a week of nonstop party.

Well yes.

GET THE LOOK: Embrace a little joie de vivre for once? You’re not bound by a flight attendant’s dress code, so you have no excuse not to go hard. Apply sparkles, look in the mirror, and then embrace more. If you don’t look like you just got to second base — at LEAST— with King Midas then you didn’t add enough sparkle.

Inspired knitwear

The blanket

In a previous life (my iconic first few months of employment where I was making good money but still spent it like a college student²) I had an eight-hour overnight layover at JFK and refused to pay for an airport hotel like any normal person would. (I was 22 and this didn’t really feel like an option yet.) Instead, I had the brilliant plan to steal the blanket off my American Airlines LHR-JFK flight and slept on the airport floor with it. Not my proudest moment.

The American Airlines blanket was basically a 2x2 piece of felt. It was not warm. There were a couple other girls my age doing the same thing, which made me feel better about being mature enough to fly across continents by myself but still too young and dumb to consider booking a hotel.

Anyway, airplane blankets have always been top of mind for me since that experience, and I’m pleased to report that United’s blanket is stunning. It has multiple layers, something that I didn’t realize was a luxury until it was taken away from me— one side is a gorgeous knit fabric, and the other side is a soft fleece. Namely, it doesn’t look or feel like a scrap piece of fabric that fell off the sweatshop line at the SHEIN factory and got packaged up for gullible airline customer swine, and to me that’s progress.

Is it warm? Well, no! I was still absolutely freezing the entire flight. My hoodie was pulled up over my head, and the blanket was wrapped around that, Jackie O-style, and I was still cold. But I suppose warmth is too much to ask for in EconomyPlus. United must reserve it for their Polaris and Premium Plus customers.

GET THE LOOK: Denim skirt. Does it kind of look like I’m wearing a jean skirt in the second picture? Or just blue knitwear.

Golden Goose sneakers

United Premium Plus

I’m not rich enough to understand what goes down in this class, except to know that they’re not rich enough to know what happens in Polaris class. But my seat, 30F, had a direct view right into the Premium Plus cabin. What kind of style reporter would I be if I didn’t at least try to sneak a peek? The curtain is sheer, after all. They’re asking for it. It’s United’s subliminal way of instilling envy in the coach cabins.

And what is the second-best cabin on UA129 wearing? Golden Goose sneakers. Of course. The physical embodiment of “I am proud to be seated in second-best class on this United flight but I will never be the first.”

My $80 Asics grandma running shoes from Nordstrom Rack are unfortunately running circles around this woman fashion-wise. It’s a regular who-wore-it-better, though really it’s a who-wore-it-worse, between the two of us. We’re both looking chopped as fuck. At least I didn’t pay $600.

GET HER LOOK: Save yourself the money and just hang a big cardboard sign that says “ROB ME” on your neck.

GET MY LOOK: $80 Asics tennis shoes that you got from Nordstrom Rack because you just needed a pair that was good enough for running. Nasty scowl on your face because you know, deep down, that your hatred of this woman’s Golden Goose shoes is just thinly-veiled jealousy that she’s sitting in a chair that probably leans further back than yours does. It’s fucked up that you can see it. It’s fucked up that you paid $230 to sit at the border of these two sections, to be able to peer through the sheer curtain and see the wide, luxurious seats of the second-best cabin on this plane. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

30F is hard middle.

1. I did AncestryDNA and it said I am ethnically New Jersey

2. Another awesome thing I did in this time period was pay $200-something/month for an Equinox membership but refuse to buy shampoo and conditioner because I could just steal it from Equinox. I would be in the showers there furiously pumping it into a travel container. In the past few years I’ve chilled out and am willing to buy my own shampoo. Or maybe that’s just lifestyle creep catching up to me. Not sure.