One button or two?
What about three? Four? Of course, you're right, four would be too many - too revealing - too reminiscent of Tom Selleck in his Magnum PI days. Gotta love that moustache, though.
Still, it's a genuine question. How low, shirt button-wise at least, dare men go? When you're not wearing a tie (or bow tie, for that matter) and you want to give that relaxed-casual impression with your ensemble, how many buttons should a gentleman undo? I say gentleman because we're in the middle of taps-aff weather in Scotland and there remains a stubborn male minority for whom the answer would be "all the buttons and just throw the shirt in the nearest bin", such is their love of bare-chested exposure in the warmer (read tepid) months.
I've always thought the answer would be one - the collar button - or two. Exposing too much male cleavage, meavage if you will, is surely a tad unseemly. Ungentlemanly even.
Yet in recent months there's been an obvious shift southwards when it comes to the depth of the open-collar V. As women's fashion dictates that we all must button our pristine white shirts right up to and including the collar, men have gone in the opposite direction and are exposing increasing amounts of flesh. First the collar bone, now the upper chest. I swear sometimes if the wind was strong enough we might, on some of the more exposed shirt-wearing males, see a nipple. The horror.
Granted, most of the men who can be spotted wearing their shirts three buttons to the wind are burly and bronzed. Most too are also remarkably hair-free, though that's another conversation for another day. It's a look that says: "Hey, I'm toned, tanned and (pretending to be) a member of the European jet set. I (want you to think I) live my life in the fast lane and unlike you have the confidence to show off (several inches of skin) about it."
A bit like the pink shirt brigade (not about showing off their feminine side, you understand, but all about chest-beating, testosterone-fuelled masculinity) the open collar crew (OCC) has become a fashion tribe all of its own in recent times. The uniform? A crisply ironed white shirt, undone at the neck (natch), brown belt, denims and brown shoes. The white shirt, black suit variant also exists, though it is seen far less frequently such is the difficulty of pulling it off.
Membership of the OCC seems to have strict criteria. Money, or the ability to look as though you have it, is non-negotiable. A tan, an endless supply of white shirts and access to an industrial iron are important too. Though, judging by some of the images from the recent Men's Fashion Week, not essential. There, some men - some very stylish men, mind - wore crumpled coloured shirts open at the collar to sit on the front row. They looked chic, but then doesn't everyone at a fashion show?
The OCC guys I spotted sitting outside Costa in the sun the other day? Not so much.
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