Why David Hockney is my style icon

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/dec/01/-sp-david-hockney-style-icon-documentary

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David Hockney’s wardrobe: it’s an obsession I have had since I discovered him at 16 at school – a love of his paintings might have come first but how those outfits made an impression on me soon after. I’ve never really worn the Hockney look in a literal sense, it’s more about aping that kind of thrown-together attitude where his clothes never look new or overly styled or even thought out but are somehow simultaneously a total “look”. This, to me, is what a real style icon should be, not just a parade of handsome actors in dashing tailoring. Anyway, in the latest chapter of his story, a retrospective documentary film, simply called Hockney, it’s impossible not to get a bit drunk all over again on the clothes, whether they’re from his 60s heyday or right now.

1. There’s always a splashy colour

Throughout his career, colour has been the constant in his wardrobe – some of my favourites: a pink sweater with gold rimmed glasses; a yellow UCLA sweatshirt and a red cable knit with black T-shirt and heavy framed specs. This is pretty apparent in the film, too. There’s a brilliant scene at the end when the camera is panning around Hockney’s Los Angeles home. Everything from the flowers to the painted railings and walkways pops with the kinds of wondrous colour that fill his artworks with joy. Rewind to the start of the film and you’ll find the artist sat in his studio wearing a grey pinstripe suit and a super poppy-red polo shirt that looked suspiciously like velour.

2. His hair is always a total hot mess

There’s a fantastic story in the film where an artist friend recounts how Hockney and a group of friends were all watching TV together at his place when an advert for Clairol hair dye came on, climaxing with the tagline “Blondes have more fun.” The assembled group immediately went out and dyed their hair. That shade of yellow blonde became one of Hockney’s defining looks during the 60s and 70s – I love how he’d clearly never brush it either so it was sticking up all over the shop, bed-hair-style. Even in the more recent painting Self Portrait with Red Braces he depicts his hair as a messy mop.

3. It’s all about a slack

One of the most recent photoshoots of Hockney for the Observer Review was an excellent case in making this trouser point. Sitting in a chair in his studio, his legs to one side, the artist is sporting a pair of striped trousers with a turn up – the fact he’s wearing them with trainers is the icing on the fashion cake (trousers and trainers are very on trend right now). But then throughout his career he has preferred a loose through-the-leg-trouser that has a creasy, laidback attitude. Think the anti-skinny jean meets the kind of trousers old men wear to a country pub.

4. There will be mismatching

The best example of this is a classic shot of Hockney in a particularly garish check suit and brogues, sat on a wicker chair, wearing one red sock and one green. The whole thing is a fabulous assault on your eyes. During the archive footage in the new documentary, there are also scenes where your eye is drawn to one of many pairs of spectacles: one lens is framed in black, one in gold. Mismatching is his thing, and yet it somehow never tips into Elton John territory.

5. There’ll be a woollen in there somewhere

Cardigans, V-necks, cardigans over V-necks, V-necks with a tie, crew necks under a suit, cardigans with a tie, patterned tank tops – the Hockney knitwear collection is epic. Rather like his winning approach to slacks, there is something about this which is so thoroughly and brilliantly English. These Hockney woolen highs have inspired many a wardrobe, fashion stylist and designers such as Burberry and Jonathan Saunders.

6. Hello, spots and stripes

Hockney is one of the very few people to make the rugby shirt look both sexy and nerdishly awkward in one swoop. While his “bumblebee” look, which consists of a rugby shirt in black and yellow matched with wide yellow slacks and trainers, is a bit much even for me, I prefer something a little more understated: while working on his recent sell out Royal Academy A Bigger Picture show, he was photographed painting in a red Breton and brace; on the cover of his David Hockney by David Hockney: My Early Years book, he sports a striped shirt and coordinating tie. Both are winning looks.

7. Accessories, accessories, accessories

Finishing touches are often tricky waters for men to swim in. Hockney has never given a damn – there’s a clip in the film where he’s brandishing a gold bag as he strides down a London street. Coloured caps, snappy ties, polka dot bow-ties, breast pocket decor and braces (who could forget the braces) are integral to the Hockney aesthetic. And often the accessories approach he takes on (not perhaps highly recommended for most men) is to pile on several jazzy ones at once; a bucket hat, a polka bow tie, a white sock and a suede shoe with a cord suit jacket for example, or a pinstripe double-breasted jacket fancied up with a red tie, yellow rose, monochrome pocket square and a turquoise polo knit. More in Hockney’s sartorial look is very often definitely more, and, frankly, when you look at a lot of the boring old dross that a lot of celebrity fellas wear these days, thank God for a bit of more. And of course, a lot of Hockney.

Hockney is on release now.