Larry David’s Unsung Fashion Criticism on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

In a midseries episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David, the HBO present’s star and creator, greets his No. 1 frenemy, Susie, (Susie Essman), who has turned up at a flowery gathering carrying a high hat and a morning coat.

He offers her a once-over, then declares, with all of the finesse of a carnival barker, “Women and gents, the sixteenth president of america, Abraham Lincoln.”

Susie shoots him a stink eye. “Like you already know something about vogue,” she sneers.

However Mr. David, 76, may beg to vary. On “Curb,” which ends its twelfth and last season on Sunday, he spews barbs like pepper spray, weighing in caustically on a welter of points: Who will get to eat the bigger share of a dessert, to chop in line, to sit down on the cool children’ desk?

However his most impassioned critiques have largely centered on vogue and on tartly deconstructing what his pals and different individuals are carrying.

All through his profession Mr. David, a Mr. Blackwell of tv comedy, has skilled a gimlet eye on human foibles. As a creator, govt producer and head author for seven seasons of “Seinfeld,” he additionally lent that present his shrewd observational powers. Even those that haven’t watched (or rewatched) “Seinfeld” might have heard of the puffy shirt, the braless wonder or the fictionalized J. Peterman catalog firm, which was impressed by a real business of the same name.

Then, as now, Mr. David operates on the premise that few issues are funnier or extra revealing than the coded messages we ship once we gown.

Trend is an instrument in his arsenal, not solely as a way of self expression however as a dependable measure of how we take into consideration ourselves, who we’re and who we need to be.

Mr. David has, unsurprisingly, utilized his analytical prowess to his personal wardrobe. A perpetual outsider, the Jewish boy from Brooklyn, he’s no much less keen than the characters he targets to mediate the world round him by way of the nuances of gown.

His signature type — an obsessively thought-about amalgam of long-sleeve polo shirts, tan trousers, nondescript hoodies, blazers and sneakers — appears meant to telegraph the standing and breezy self-assurance of a Hollywood bigwig. So do the baseball caps he usually wears onscreen and off, which have featured logos for the posh island resort Amanyara and for Air Mail, a digital publication catering to an prosperous crowd.

Mr. David makes no secret that his one-look-fits-all strategy is supposed partly to stick over his personal class anxieties and to concurrently prop up a shaky self-image. And he’s decided to slot in regardless of the circumstance: In an early episode of “Curb,” he asks Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), his onscreen spouse for a part of the collection, what the typical gentile wears to a baptism.

Sartorially, he has adopted a particular credo: Put on one good merchandise at a time, “in any other case it’s an excessive amount of,” he as soon as told GQ. “It’s important to be half-dressed. That’s my vogue concept: Half is extra.” (A consultant for Mr. David didn’t reply to requests for remark for this text.)

Extra is repugnant to Mr. David, and calling it out has been a by way of line in his work. His proliferating listing of aversions in “Curb” embrace floppy shorts and tucked-in shirts on males, extra-long shoelaces (he repeatedly journeys over his personal), bow ties, bedazzled sweatshirts and affectation in any kind.

In a later “Curb” episode, he confronts his buddy Richard Lewis, the late comedian, at Mr. Lewis’s artwork exhibition. Taking in his buddy’s silver-buttoned, mandarin collar tunic, Mr. David taunts, “Are you vying for the title of essentially the most pretentious man on this planet?”

Within the Season 10 finale, he eyes the pocket sq. worn by a tv correspondent who’s about to interview him. “It appears to be like misplaced,” Mr. David chides. “That’s for some English dandy. It’s not for a journalist.”

Typically, he invokes vogue throughout awkward or painful conditions. In an early episode, when a grieving window reveals him a treasured picture of her husband, Mr. David zeros in on the lifeless man’s apparel. “I like this shirt,” he tells the widow. “Do you’ve gotten any thought the place he bought it?” he asks, a question that attests much less to his acquisitive nature than to his personal unease.

On “Curb,” Mr. David reserves a few of his sharpest zingers for people who find themselves attempting too onerous. In a midseries episode, his housemate Leon (J.B. Smoove), doing his finest impersonation of an accountant, wears a go well with with a bow tie and spectacles. “What’s with this go well with?” Mr. David asks. “You seem like Farrakhan.”

He’s no much less affronted when folks’s garb appears inconsistent with their skilled standing. After seeing his psychiatrist prancing on a seaside in a skimpy Speedo in an early episode, he begins to query the physician’s bona fides. He equally bristles when his property lawyer turns up for a gathering in denims and tells Mr. David that it’s informal Friday. “I would like you folks to be uncomfortable on a regular basis,” Mr. David responds.

And when an actual property agent who’s displaying a home insists to Mr. David and Mr. Lewis that his sweater is 100% cashmere, Mr. David squinches up his options in disbelief.

“Perhaps 35 to 50 on the most,” he counters, earlier than saying to Mr. Lewis, “This man’s mendacity a few cashmere sweater. Do you’re feeling comfy with that?”

Occasionally, Mr. David’s critiques could be constructive — if flagrantly sexist.

In a midseason episode, he suggests to his workplace assistant, who’s carrying a skimpy T-shirt that exposes her midriff, that “if it’s not an excessive amount of hassle,” she might begin carrying extra work-appropriate apparel. When she asks what exactly that might entail, he instructs her cheerily. “One thing between a this,” he says, gesturing at her shrunken high, “and a burqa.”

In one other episode, Mr. David casts a cool eye on Paula, an escort who’s turned out in the usual trappings of her commerce: a bustier, a tiny skirt and fishnet hose. “Why this outfit?” he asks benignly, happening to counsel that her enterprise may decide up if she wore one thing extra discreet.

She takes him up on his suggestion, buying and selling her spandex for cashmere, and, wouldn’t you already know, enterprise prospers. Mr. David, who is aware of completely properly what his status-conscious friends would anticipate from a hooker, couldn’t be happier, asserting beatifically that he has carried out a mitzvah.

But once more, his critique proves spot on.