by When Curb Your Enthusiasm came out in 2000, the cult sitcom’s irascible star and creator, Larry David, wasn’t a style staple. But during the 12-season run of the critically acclaimed HBO comedy, which comes to an end in the coming weeks, David has emerged as an unexpected fashion icon.
“Larry David is one of the most handsome men on TV,” proclaimed New York magazine in 2020. On TikTok, videos from the likes of stylist Allison Bornstein explore “accidental style icon” looks, celebrating the “classic , serial and practical. ” elements. Fashion publications have urged readers to guide their “lay back dad style”. He appeared on the front row at New York fashion week – admittedly with his fingers in his ears due to the loud music – and on the front of T-shirts, with one reading: “You’re allowed to be happy, but you’re not allowed you have to be happy. in front of me.”
David has come a long way from The Pants Tent in the first episode, which focused on the awkward way his beige slacks rode up around his groin when he sat down.
David’s look consists of high-quality white Cotton Citizen T-shirts, well-fitted blazers, cashmere sweatshirts in muted colors, his favorite Ecco shoes and Oliver Peoples round glasses. On the golf course, David wears a fan and a baseball cap bearing the logo of former Vanity Fair newsletter editor Graydon Carter, or the word “Menemsha”, the name of a village on Martha’s Vineyard. None of it screams stylishness or great interest in current trends, more just a man who knows what he likes and is comfortable wearing it.
Author and cultural commentator Jason Diamond calls David’s look “post-normcore”. “It’s normal, but it’s sneaky. He dresses very well, but there’s nothing flashy about it … He’s one of the smartest dressers on TV.”
He compares David’s style to the “smart casual” look often found in the films of Nora Ephron or Steve Martin in the late 1980s and early 90s. “It’s very subtle so people don’t really take it.” Jerry Seinfeld once described the look as “Upper West Side communist”.
Like everything, David is precise about clothes. In real life he is the son of a salesman in the garment district, and he comes to him armed with a rulebook. As he told GQ in 2020: “Only one ‘nice’ piece of clothing should be worn at a time. Otherwise it’s too much. Overdressed. You have to be half dressed. That’s my fashion theory, since you asked: Half Is More.” This is the kind of pithy rule that translates well on TikTok.
But clothes aside, “a big part of it”, says Diamond, “is he’s so confident … those shots of just kind of gangling, walking down the street”. In our era of quiet luxury, it makes sense that such an imbalance would be in short supply for fans.
Leslie Schilling, who came on board as Curb Your Enthusiasm’s costume designer when the show returned from its six-year hiatus in 2017, agrees that people “like the way he carries himself.” But people still ask her: “What are those pants?’ Where can I get those?” David is now 77, but, she says, “he doesn’t dress like an old man, he looks very stylish”. It helps that he is “tall and slim, so fortunately things are this kind of hangs nicely on him”.
Throughout Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry remains essentially the same, unwavering in his belief that he is right about the world – and the world must bend to his whims or happen around him. And this happened with fashion, too: the trends came to him. “In the early seasons, Larry’s style is definitely not as well put together,” says Schilling. “It’s just a little baggier, less equipped.” Her job was to gently change the look. “The clothes were dated and it wasn’t like he went shopping much at that time,” she says of the off years. So she opted for things that were a little less baggy but not too straight, ditching some V-neck sweaters, adding cashmere, Tellis AG trousers, the occasional high-end blazer and a little more color.
It can be difficult to separate aspects of TV Larry from the real thing, at least visually. “At the end of every season, he brings the clothes home,” says Schilling. She sees David doing an interview on TV and recognizes the clothes she brought to wear. There are some of David’s own clothes in the mix – especially when it comes to his golf caps – but she adds new elements to this.
“This season, I mentioned this Paul Smith jacket, a cashmere blazer, unstructured,” she says. “At first he didn’t seem to like it very much at all. And then by the end of the season, that’s what he wanted to wear.”
Ultimately, though, it’s not particularly about fashion. “He just wants to be comfortable and feel like himself,” says Schilling. “As long as he doesn’t have to think about it or mess with the collar, you know, he’s pretty happy.” Schilling thinks this is part of the appeal of his style: it is “accessible. People can easily dress like this without going overboard.”
It is this effortless appeal that Diamond and many others focus on. “All over the world, people love Larry David,” says Diamond. He predicts another wave of Larry-inspired Curb-centric in 20 years or so. “I think more people should look to him as an inspiration; style and also just a way of living, because he has done a good job of living.”
