THE BUTTON OF TOMORROW
SYNTH LEGEND QUITS POP TO DEVELOP NEW CLOTHES FASTENING TECHNOLOGY
ACCORDING to archaeologists, people have been fastening their clothes with buttons for at least 5000 years. And in all that time, their design has hardly changed; a simple dished disc drilled with 2 or 4 holes to accept thread. Indeed, a bone button from prehistoric Byzantium would work perfectly well on a modern polyester cardigan or suit jacket.
But according to eighties electro-synth legend GARY
NUMAN, all that is set to change. “Every other aspect of human technology has come on in leaps and bound whilst buttons have remained in the dark ages,” the singer announced at a hastily convened and poorly attended press conference yesterday.
crumhorn
“No-one would expect me to play my 1979 hit single Cars on a harpsichord or a crumhorn, so why are we still doing our coats up using bronze age kit like buttons. It beggars belief,” he said.
Numan, 59, shocked the several reporters who were present when he announced that he was going to take a break from touring and recording in order to concentrate on his dream of updating clothes fastening technology for the twenty-first century. “It is my dream to drag buttons kicking and screaming into the modern era,” he continued.
“We have been pushing a disc through a reinforced fabric slot for too long,” he said. “In this high tech age of space travel and microwave ovens, it’s simply anachronistic.”
buttons
But the Are Friends Electric star said it was still too early to describe the form that his futuristic buttoning system might take. “I’ve not really sat down and started thinking about it properly yet,” he said. “I’ve been very busy doing the publicity for my new album and single for the last few weeks, so buttons have sort of been on the back burner a bit just recently.”
widow twanky
Nevertheless, Numan, who last troubled the Top Ten in 1982, promised that his new invention would represent a genuine step change in clothes fastening technology. “Believe me, this is going to be the biggest thing that’s happened to buttons since the Ronco Buttoneer,” he told reporters.
When pressed, the uncooked-pastry-coloured singer suggested that his system would work in a similar way to velcro. “Obviously, it won’t actually be velcro because that’s already been invented,” he said. “It’ll probably be more like one of those ziplock things that they have on resealable bags of dog biscuits.”
“Not exactly like those, though, obviously. Sort of like that, but not the same. Because they’ve already been invented too,” he added.