Tighten up: reading Fantastic Man's Buttoned-Up
Tighten up. Button up. Straighten out. Too much pressure, this pressure's got to stop. Er, yeah man, because - wearing my best top-button-very-definitely-done-up black shirt while sitting on a train to London - I've just read the Fantastic Man Buttoned-Up book, an offering in the slightly tacky Penguin Lines London Underground-related book series from 2013. Something like a slimline coffee table book with intellectual pretensions, it's a surprisingly beguiling little thing, or so I think. Based on the very shaky premise that there's a particular fashion scene in East London where young men do up the top button of their shirt which they then very self-consciously wear without a tie, the book has short essays (whimsical reflections more than essays, really) on what this may or may not signify. It's an extremely slender basis for a book, but I suppose that's part of its charm. Most people's reaction to all this would very likely be: what is this obscure fashi...
