“We have reached the end of painstakingly slow unbuttoning,” declares the 60-second Kickstarter trailer for Mighty Styley, a shirt with a patented button design which you can undo in half a second.
Though, in terms of problems that need solving, it’s down there with self-slicing figs, but heck, I’m so lazy that when it comes to getting clean shirts out of the wardrobe, they’re still buttoned up from the last time I wore them, so maybe these are the buttons for me. Laziness aside, the shirt might also be useful for elderly or disabled people. I’ve also recently broken my collar bone and currently can’t lift my left arm properly, so ought to be a decent guinea pig.
My first attempt at undoing a prototype shirt – an Incredible Hulk-style tear – nearly rebroke my clavicle, but realising that you have to undo the bottom button as you would a normal shirt and then pull apart from the bottom, things got a little bit easier.
That said, it’s actually harder to do up than a normal shirt as the buttons come undone so easily – the time saved tearing the shirt off in the evening is probably offset by fiddling with it in the morning. Suffice to say, you won’t be spending the time saved working on your novel.
The final versions of the shirts (which they hope will go on sale in January) will come with velcro tabs to stop any public wardrobe malfunctions, which one might suggest is something of an unreassuring security measure. But if these new buttons make it easier for people who find it difficult to dress themselves, then who am I to complain? Whether they make it into shops or not is a different matter. They currently retail at €69 for adults and with 19 days to go, the Kickstarter has raised €1,520 of its €35,000 goal.
