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FANTASTIC MAN IN GREECE MAGNIFIED FANTASTIC MAN G
ert Jonkers is Editor-in-chief and publisher of Fantastic Man which boasts a fresh redesign in its latest issue on Greece. words Michael McDermott FANTASTIC – You started Fantastic Man back in 2005 – what was the niche you identified at the time and how has the magazine evolved? Interesting men and their personalities and their personal style. A criterium on which we judge themes and subjects is always whether we like it ourselves. In that sense Fantastic Man is a very personal magazine to Jop and me. It’s not like we spotted a niche that needed to be served. We just felt that a magazine to our taste was missing, so we made it ourselves. New! Nieuw! Nouveau! Néos! This is the revamped 30th issue of FANTASTIC MAN magazine totally devoted to ancient and super modern Greece. Issue nº 30 Autumn and Winter 2019/20 £12.50, $30 In GREECE UN HABITED IN– You’ve described a fascination for detail as a key hallmark of Fantastic Man - how is this realised and do you feel by doing so you are highlighting often overlooked aspects of fashion and culture? In general, we care about the detail as much as about the bigger concept, in the sense that we can spend a lot of time on a photo caption, or on the content pages or on the exact placement of the page number. It’s just a fact that details are important, isn’t it? A detailed focus on something always seems more interesting to me than a global impression. Who wants to know that something is ‘sort of this or that’? You want to know the exact details. Do you want an incredible dinner in Tokyo followed by a memorable late night in one bar, or do you want to drive around Tokyo in a bus to get a global impression of what the city is like? Of course, it goes for fashion and clothes as well. I have one winter coat that is super warm and comfortable and looks great, but when I wear it, I notice that one sleeve is two or three centimetres shorter than the other, and it annoys the hell out of me. That little detail ruins the whole coat. – Why did you decide to redesign Fantastic Man? What process did you go through in landing upon the new format, look and thematic approach? We changed it because we can. We don’t have a ‘boss’ apart from ourselves and so if we feel like changing something, we can. And of course, after 15 years of making Fantastic Man, we have changed, and the world has changed, the media landscape has changed, and we felt like Fantastic Man could change. And so, we talked about it for a good year, discussed possibilities – shall we go from publishing twice to once a year, big or small, glossy or newspaper print – and we found the answer in treating Fantastic Man as an object, and each issue as a project, using a theme as a platform to canalise our ideas. Petássi Kartéli (right) 228 Photography by Johannes Schwartz 229 – You’ve chosen Greece as the reference point for your 30th edition and a “specific interpretation of Greekness and masculinity”. What did you discover about it and how has what you referenced at the Mag Culture 68