When Curb Your Enthusiasm emerged in 2000, the cult sitcomâs irascible star and creator, Larry David, wasnât exactly a bastion of style. But over the critically acclaimed HBO comedyâs 12-season run, which draws to a close in the coming weeks, David has evolved into an unexpected fashion role model.
âLarry David is one of the bestdressed men on television,â New York magazine declared in 2020. On TikTok, videos from the likes of stylist Allison Bornstein examine the looks of an âaccidental style iconâ, celebrating the âclassic, layered and practicalâ elements. Fashion publications have implored readers to channel his âlaid-back dad styleâ. He has appeared on the front row at New York fashion week â admittedly with his fingers in his ears due to the loud music â and on the front of T-shirts, with one reading: âYouâre allowed to be happy, but not in front of me.â
David has come a long way from The Pants Tent of the first episode, which centred on the awkward way his beige slacks bunched up around the groin when he sat down.
The David look entails plain, high-quality white Cotton Citizen T-shirts, well-fitting blazers, cashmere sweatshirts in muted colours, his favoured Ecco shoes and signature Oliver Peoples round glasses. On the golf course, David adds a windbreaker and a baseball cap bearing the logo of former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carterâs newsletter, or the word âMenemshaâ, the name of a village on Marthaâs Vineyard. None of it screams stylishness or a great interest in current trends, more just a man who knows what he likes and is comfortable wearing it.
The author and cultural commentator Jason Diamond calls Davidâs look âpost-normcoreâ. âItâs normal, but itâs sneaky. He dresses really well, but thereâs nothing flashy about it ⦠Heâs actually one of the smartest dressers on TV.â
He likens Davidâs style to the âsmart casualâ look often found in Nora Ephron or Steve Martin films in the late 1980s and early 90s. âItâs very subtle and so people donât really pick up on it.â Jerry Seinfeld once described the look as âUpper West Side communistâ.
As with everything, David is exacting about clothes. In real life he is the son of a garment-district salesman, and approaches getting dressed with a rulebook. As he told GQ in 2020: âOne should wear only one âniceâ piece of clothing at a time. Otherwise itâs too much. Too dressed. You have to be half dressed. Thatâs my fashion theory, since you asked: Half Is More.â This is the kind of pithy rule that translates well on TikTok.
But clothes to one side, âa big part of itâ, Diamond says, âis heâs so confident ⦠those shots of him just sort of gangling, walking down the streetâ. In our era of quiet luxury, it makes sense that such understated nonchalance would be finding fans.
Leslie Schilling, who came on board as Curb Your Enthusiasmâs costume designer when the show returned from its six-year hiatus in 2017, agrees that people âlike the way that he carries himselfâ. But she still has people asking her: âWhat are those pants?â Where do I get those?â David is 77 now, but, she says, he âdoesnât dress like a frumpy older man, he still looks very stylishâ. It helps that he is âtall and slender, so fortunately things just kind of hang really nicely on himâ.
Throughout Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry stays essentially the same, undimmed in his belief that he is right about the world â and the world must bend to his whims or happen around him. And this has occurred with fashion, too: the trends have come towards him. âIn early seasons, Larryâs style is definitely not as put together,â says Schilling. âItâs just a little baggier, less fitted.â Her work was to gently tweak the look. âThe clothes were dated and it wasnât like he had really gone shopping a lot in that time,â she says of the hiatus years. So she chose things that were a little less baggy but not too straight, getting rid of some V-neck sweaters, adding cashmere, AGâs Tellis trousers, the occasional high-end blazer and a little more colour.
It can be hard to separate aspects of TV Larry from the real one, visually at least. âAt the end of each season, he does take the clothes home,â says Schilling. Sheâll see David doing an interview on TV and recognise the clothes she brought to set. There are some of Davidâs own clothes in the mix â especially when it comes to his golf caps â but into this, she adds new elements.
âThis season, I mentioned this Paul Smith jacket, a cashmere blazer, unstructured,â she says. âAt first he didnât seem to really like it at all. And then by the end of the season, thatâs all he wanted to wear.â
Ultimately, though, itâs not particularly about fashion. âHe mostly wants to be comfortable and feel like himself,â says Schilling. âAs long as he doesnât have to think about it or mess with the collar, you know, heâs pretty happy.â Schilling thinks this is part of the appeal of his style: it is âapproachable. People can dress like this easily without going high-end.â
This somehow effortless appeal is something Diamond and many others gravitate towards. âAcross the world, people really love Larry David,â says Diamond. He predicts that in 20 or so years there will be another wave of Larry-inspired Curb-core. âI think more people should look to him as an inspiration; style and also just sort of how to live, because heâs done a good job of living.â