Father John Misty Shares Style Tips, Says He Has ‘Button-Up Dysmoprhia’

Father John Misty is the subject of a new fashion spread for New York Magazine’s the Cut, and in the corresponding feature, he opens up about his perennially unbuttoned look and his rejection of what he calls the “basic-ass dude” ensemble.

According to J. Tillman, he suffers from “button-up dysmorphia,” accounting for his chronically clavicle-exposing shirts. “I think one button lower, to me, looks more normal than it does to other people,” he said. Likewise, he said he channels the iconic styles of Lou Reed, Nick Cave and Serge Gainsbourg.

In contrast, he’s utterly opposed to white shirt-and-khaki combos. “Everyone kind of looks like a graphic designer,” Tillman said. “I just hate that look. It’s predicated on not f---ing up, as opposed to the emphasis really being on expression. There’s a lot of prescriptive fashion -- ‘Oh, you need the perfect white shirt, and you need the perfect khaki’ -- and it’s just so boring.”

Tillman also discussed his Father John Misty moniker and the persona he’s adopted along with it, which is meant to reveal all performers -- whether they admit it or not -- act under such guises. “Performance is sort of innately fake, and I wanted to be genuine about the fakeness of it all,” he said.

That would certainly serve as the I Love You, Honeybear singer’s motive for covering Ryan Adams’ covers of Taylor Swift’s 1989, as well as his latest song, “The Memo,” which followed soon after.