Pedestrian’s resident Fantastic Man recently caught up with Butt and Fantastic Man Editor-in-Chief Gert Jonkers to discuss soon to be launched title The Gentlewoman, the importance of a firm handshake and how to get Bret Easton Ellis on your cover in half an hour.
So you spent the last few weeks traveling, is that correct? Yes, that is correct. I mean I’m traveling a lot anyway but I was literally never here so…
Is that something that’s a regular feature of your life now, traveling all over the world? It kind of is, it’s getting like that more and more I guess.
Can you tell us a little bit about where you’ve been in the last few weeks? Well, Jop and I, we went to Tokyo because we did a lecture there over at this congress. We went to London a couple of times because we have an office there. I’m in Amsterdam now but we go to London a lot because we have an office there and we have some more projects there that we’re working on and I had to go to Milan for, sort of, selling ads and being nice to certain people with certain brands. I guess that’s it. We went somewhere else, before that we went to Stockholm. I mean it’s been a crazy year, Moscow earlier this year. I’m going to all those places that I’ve never been before so that’s exciting.
Yeah, that’s brilliant. So can you tell us a little bit more about the lecture that you did in Tokyo? Well, we just did a lecture about Fantastic Man, that was it. There was this magazine I put together and they had lectures where they invited Urich from L32C in Berlin and Yorgo from Intersection in London and they invited us and there were five other speakers from New York and from Hong Kong and it was fun and we got the opportunity to stay in Tokyo for a little bit longer because we had never been, we both had never been so, it was nice.
What took you to Moscow? That was an interesting trip because we were invited for some sort of, well, to be honest, I still don’t really know what it was but I guess it was some sort of unit this woman put together for a couple of fashion shows. There was some art openings and she invited like 30 people or so to come to Moscow and somebody sponsored it and I guess it was kind of a cultural exchange. It was amazing because, you know, when you go to Moscow, it’s not a place you book a holiday to so, it was very nice to have an introduction.
Indeed, completely. And you mentioned that you spent some time in Milan talking to advertisers, I wouldn’t imagine that that was something in your job description. I thought your role was purely Editorial. My official title is the Editor-in-Chief but anyway, we’re a tiny company and Jop and I are also publishers and then I deal with a lot of legal shit and I mean, I’m not selling ads but it is just a matter of showing your face sometimes when people want to talk about – we are launching this new magazine, The Gentlewoman, next year.
Yes I know. I saw the preview in the last issue. And so it makes sense to sort of talk, explain to people what you are going to do. I mean I don’t go to Milan every six months for it but sometimes you just need to go and have some appointments and say like, this is what we’re going to do because people obviously don’t know if they haven’t seen your thing yet. Yet we’re depending on some sort of support so…
Yeah, sure thing. Can you explain what you are planning to do with the Gentlewoman? Yes, well ever since we started Fantastic Man, a lot of people and maybe more of them women than men always said to us, “oh what a shame, there isn’t a Fantastic Man for women,” and the more we heard that, the more we felt that, maybe, it’s a legitimate question, maybe we should do a Fantastic Man for women. And then we thought it was boring to call it Fantastic Woman. Also looking at it for some reason it’s an ugly title and we didn’t want to just roll out this concept that people would make jokes about, “Oh we’ve got a Fantastic Boat, Fantastic Car, Fantastic Travel,” I mean terrible. So, we started thinking about what kind of woman’s magazine we would want to make – and it’s not going to be a literal translation of Fantastic Man because that wouldn’t work, you know. As you all know, men and women aren’t completely the same so it also makes sense to make a new magazine if it is for a new reader.
Yeah completely. Do you feel more pressure trying to stand out in the women’s magazine market as opposed to the men’s magazine market? Because Fantastic Man did bring a completely new perspective to men’s fashion magazines but women’s fashion magazines there are already so many titles that offer different perspectives…
I don’t think we feel more pressure to extend out more, you know, I mean it’s just what we want to do with something that is equally interesting, we want to do something that is good and it’s kind of hard to say. No, every project needs dedication I think, so will it stand out less? I don’t know, and the funny thing is it remains to be seen of course because we’re not really – I mean the only thing you can do is to actually do it, so that’s all we’re doing now. We’re finding out a lot of things, we’re finding out that some things are easy, we find out that some things are hard, we find out that some things are working for Fantastic Man but not working for Gentlewoman, and it is an interesting process and I think by finding that out, I hope that we will stumble upon some interesting angles.
Can you tell us what’s in store for The Gentlewoman? Not really because I think a lot of things are still about to be shot or some people are about to be interviewed but you never know until it happens. I don’t want to jinx it by saying it and then it’s not going to happen. The other thing is I’m not the Editor of The Gentlewoman so I’m involved in it but we are working with Penny Martin who used to be at ShowStudio. We appointed her Editor-in-Chief so she deals with a lot.
So what’s in store for Fantastic Man? Well that’s even more difficult because it is a short season and because we’ve been working so hard on The Gentlewoman and some other things that we had to do. Editing is insanely late for Fantastic Man so I don’t think, absolutely nothing is shot. I think hardly anything has been planned in dates so I don’t know when it is going to happen but it is going to be an interesting issue because the first meetings we had about it were in July where we sit down and think who we would love to have in the issue. Then we end up with 10 names which to us, if 60% happens, it’s a fine issue for us and then we start working on that. And then it turned out a month ago or so that all those names fell through so suddenly it was early November and we had absolutely nothing. No other ideas anymore and nothing was going to happen so we had to start completely all over again and think of a new cast and that’s what we’re working on now and also some things are easy and a lot of things are hard. So I really don’t know what’s going to happen.
Okay. It’s a shame to know that there’s no issue coming out soon. I think one thing that does strike me about your cover stars, even a lot of the people profiled in the magazine is that, they seem to follow no pattern. How do you guys argue who’s going to be on the cover? Or find that right person for the moment? I think, by just mentioning a lot of names to each other. You know, we just say things and I mean we’ve always liked to work with people when they don’t have something in particular to sell because first of all they are going to be in every magazine and second, they usually don’t want to talk about anything else so it’s going to be quite a single issue one dimensional story so, and it’s always much more interesting to talk to people when they don’t have something to sell because they are much more reflective and they have a much better perspective on themselves I think. But I mean, we were super happy with the cover stars we had but every time, strangely enough every time we start, you start all over again, you have to reinvent the wheel with every issue almost.
So how do you approach someone like Bret Easton Ellis when he’s not promoting a book or Ewan McGregor when he’s not actually directly promoting a film? Bret Easton Ellis was amazing because, at some point, in the middle of the night, we were all sitting there and emailing and I mean it was like 11:00 at night or so. And someone said let’s do Bret Easton Ellis. And then the other two were like that’s a good idea and Charlie googled his agent, called his agent in LA where it was of course 10:00 in the morning and she said “not another magazine but I’ll ask him” and she called back 10 minutes later and she said, “Oh, he’s super excited”. So that was the easiest one in a way or at least the fastest one we ever did. That was between the idea and having it fixed was, I think, half an hour. But then Ewan McGregor, we talked with Ewan McGregor or with his people for a year and a half I think. We talked about it and at some point there was a chance that he could to do it and it fell through and then we postponed it til the next issue. So it was just a matter of saying “well listen, we think it’s time to do it now,” and then they say, “Yeah, maybe it is. Yeah let’s do it.”.
So what’s the criteria for a Fantastic Man cover star? It’s not very easy to say because the question implies that we make the magazine for a very specific purpose or about a very specific group of people. Whereas I think we are interested in the diversity and not so much what people have in common but what sets people apart. So what would be the criteria for the cover? I mean it definitely helps if people are a name in the sense that people have a vague idea of who they are and one thing that’s always worked for Fantastic Man is to choose people with a future. What we don’t like is when people just dig up anecdotes and 5 page stories about the past. Some people say, that sometimes people say, “Oh you should do Hubert de Givenchy” and I think, well, Hubert de Givenchy you get a lot of stories about Audrey Hepburn, Paris in the 1950s and I couldn’t care less. Whereas we did Pierre Cardin who is 87 but I do think the man is still working and still as inspired and active as he was 70 years ago. I think that’s pretty intriguing, he probably doesn’t have another 50 years to live but that doesn’t matter. It’s just that people should live in the now and should have ambitions for the future. I mean ambition sounds a bit childish but people should be busy. I think that’s quite fantastic.
Do you ever get star struck by some of the people that you do have a chance to meet and interview through the magazine? Of course. I mean of course we do get star struck. I think being star struck is not so much about somebody’s fame as it is about the personality. I mean some people just evoke a certain star struckness whereas others don’t make you feel nervous. I think it’s – I’m trying to think. I must also say that I’ve worked as a music critic for three years. Before I started writing about fashion, I was a music critic and I interviewed so many people that at some point I got a little bit used to meeting famous people. Funnily enough music people are a hundred times more famous than fashion people. Having said that Karl Lagerfeld manages to stand out. Actually Tom Ford is the same. If you meet Tom Ford, it’s oh my god, it’s Tom Ford and that’s not so much about what he’s done or that the things he has done are much, much more amazing than another big designer but it’s just the personality.
One of the things that you mentioned in quite a few interviews is the unwritten rules of the magazine – you never use puns, you don’t use the word you to refer to the audience and you have banned the word cool from the office? That’s funny because we were talking about it yesterday. We don’t like the word cool just because it’s a terrible word, I mean there are other words and a lot of terrible word constructions like work/play. Cool, I mean cool is just a terrible word. Why would you want something to be cold? I mean if it means something positive. I mean some words are just too easy and the American thing with language is you can work with it if you think twice and try to come up with a better way of describing things then usually it gets better.
Yeah. You also recently wrote the foreword for the book of Sydney photographer Samuel Hodge. Yes.
He told me the story of how he emailed you to ask if there was any way that you could possibly write the foreword and then you came straight back and said of course I would love to do it, and it was very cute. Can you tell us about how you met Sam? I’ve been in contact with Sam for I guess five, six or seven years just emailing. I think he’s never been to Europe until recently and I’ve never been to Australia so we were emailing, did some things for Butt, our other magazine and then, he came to Europe last year and he was in Amsterdam staying with a friend who lives very near our office. We had lunch and it was nice to finally meet. And I’ve always loved his photography so it was an honor to be part of the book. And then it’s a shame he went back to Australia. We don’t get to see him anymore here
Yeah, you’ll have to make a trip out to Australia soon. Yeah, I should. It’s on my list. I should go. I think it would be nice to go for a holiday no? Part of the country where you want to go for three weeks and do nothing.
Yeah, we highly recommend that you do. One of the most popular sections of Fantastic Man is the recommendations and one of the parts that I really enjoy. If you could pick one recommendation for a prospective Fantastic Man, what would it be? Shake hands. To shake hands is nice I think a hand shake is good but also polishing your brown shoes with black shoe polish I think is a good tip.
