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 fashion-obsessed nonsense? Is it ... a joke? But no, it's not. There are essays-cum-musings from the journalists Paul Flynn and Alexander Fury, the designer/editor Jop van Bennekom (from Dutch mag Fantastic Man), and the music critic Simon Reynolds. Additionally, there's an interview with Neil Tennant, one I found surprisingly interesting/likeable despite never having rated their music or in any way cared about the Pet Shop Boys. And there are some pretty nice inky black-and-white photos (by Andrew T Vottero) of ... er, road junctions in moody East London (I recognised a couple of them). Plus, various pics of blokes wearing buttoned-up shirts, some of them models, some of them people in the street or from bands. Yeah, it's all slightly odd/forced, something that probably shouldn't have got past the ideas stage, but, I must admit, I still quite liked it. Why? Well, for one thing I personally like the buttoned-up look. Not for any mod affilliation reasons or as a "style tribe" thing. Just that I think it can look ... pretty good. It's all about the right shirt, of course, the fit, how it goes with your other clothes, or maybe just how you're feeling that day. And the other reason this book is worth a quick read (it'll take you about 35 mins cover to cover) is that it's not bad at exploring the intersection of the buttoned-up look and music. Plus, it even throws in a few thoughts about how this might be a quintessentially English thing, reflecting the benighted nation's infamous uptightness and self-repressed nature. Yeah man, you thought it was just a matter of fastening a button on a shirt. How wrong you were. So here, for what it's worth, are a few bits from Buttoned-Up which I found reasonably interesting:

He's forgotten his tie again: Giordano Cioni on the cover

It's a sin: Neil Tennant ponders the deeper meaning of the top button

*Simon Reynolds reckons 60s mod culture was partly a reaction to Britain's oppressive class structure, with young working-class youths (and also the "liminal" class, half-working class, half-middle class) styling it out in Italianate suits on the streets of Romford or Walthamstow as a defiant sort of "fuck you" to the real older generation of suit-wearers: the City gents and the comfortable managerial class. Reynolds says it was a perverse type of rebellion where new rules about ultra-sharpness were invented as part of a lifestyle based on amphetamines and soul music, and looking good in the eyes of other boys/men (not so much to attract or impress women). It was a scene (my generation, baby) and clothes were of maximum importance, not least the tightly done up top button. 

*According to Reynolds, the Subway Sect's quasi-mod look and anti-rockist agenda (and presumably their sound as well) was very influential on the emerging Scottish post-punk scene of Josef K and Orange Juice, and later with the Pastels and The Jesus And Mary Chain and others. 

*In Paul Flynn's contribution there's an anecdote about the drummer Patrick Doyle from the band Veronica Falls, and how, as a 16-year-old schoolboy in Scotland, a chance sighting of a photo of Orange Juice's James Kirk in a buttoned-up shirt led to him adopting the look and all that it seemed to encode. In other words: being "cool", slightly different, understated, non-macho. It's a modest enough anecdote - verging on trivial - but I think it's also quite meaningful in its own way. I guess we've all got our own examples of these style mini-epiphanies. There's a low-key charm to something like this - a bit like er, doing up your top button. 

And that will do, I think. This is a very short book (barely longer than some of my blogs) and it arguably stretches out its subject matter to the point of near-ridiculousness. To claim (Flynn again) that the buttoned-up look is a "recognisably East End move" or that, even more specifically, it "thrives in the Borough of Hackney" (Gert Jonkers & Jop van Bennekom from Fantastic Man) seems to me almost absurd. I've lived in this area of London for 25 years, slogging my way to millions of gigs, and always ... checking people out. The fashion-conscious youth of Hackney: yep, I know 'em. No, the buttoned-up look is a rarity in this area and has been throughout the past quarter of a century. Instead, I reckon the Fantastic Man team have allowed their admiration for a certain sartorial/aesthetical style to get the better of them. It's a forced argument, but then again it doesn't overly matter. In my view, Buttoned-Up contains a sprinkling of interesting-enough observations about the buttoned-up look, especially the music-related ones. And perhaps what's best about this book is the very fact that it does try to stretch a seemingly minuscule clothing issue - whether or not you do up the top button on your shirt - into a whole mini-thesis. In fact, almost a philosophy about how to live your life. And appropriately enough, the book is itself a modest success in how it presents itself. The striking photo of the well-buttoned chap on the front (a guy called Giordano Cioni apparently) and the slightly textured off-white paper the book is printed on all work rather nicely, as do the Sebaldian photos of empty streets that someone has - in a moment of inspiration - decided for no apparent reason to throw into Buttoned-Up. Yeah, read this book and you'll never wear a shirt again without getting all self-conscious about it. Do I do up the top button or leave it undone? Decisions, decisions.