A Gangly Montana boy, David Lynch was first a painter. The oddest of Americans, the most American of oddballs, Lynch was a man with a uniform. Though he chose a subdued dress, he confessed to ‘wonder’ on the occasion of a tribute to his costume designer Patricia Norris: ‘each time someone came out of the dressing room, they were the character, the clothes were perfect.’

The story of the boy with the country accent, with the soft rigor, has often been told. Two anecdotes reveal him better still.

Young, he runs for school treasurer. His childhood friend Jack Fisk recalls: ‘the other boys came in madras and khakis; David showed up in tennis shoes and a seersucker(from Indian Shirushaker, wrinkled) cotton fabric with alter More suit. No one would bat an eye today, but at the time, no one would have thought of doing it.’

Guy Trebay, of the New York Times, compared his hair to Hitchock’s profile or John Ford’s eyepatch. Lynch ended up dressing like the former, and playing the latter. The director rarely let himself act (‘I’ve purposely tried to stay away from it, giving the likes of Harrison Ford and George Clooney a chance at their careers’). In Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans, he appears briefly to give a young director precious advice: ‘horizon at the bottom is interesting; horizon on top is interesting; horizon in the middle is boring as shit!’. One flagbearer of Americana speaks through another. He gets his costume delivers; wears it for two weeks straight before the shoot: a few paint flecks on his trousers on the day.

Between these two dates, a uniform solidified. A pair of wide khaki cottonnatural cellulosic textile fiber constituting the seminal ha More chinos, a blazer (‘Would you say it is generally black? Yes’) and a shirt buttoned to the top [always the same, a white ‘planète’ designed by his friend Agnès b], without a tie. From his town, he keeps the pleasure of Sears khakis and Gant or Brook Brothers shirts. From Francis Bacon, his ‘greatest hero’, he takes a manner, a sense for matter, and a taste for dark city suits, dressed down by the shirt: color for Bacon, full-button-up, generous cuffs and length for Lynch.

After wrapping Twin Peaks’ third season, he goes back to the studio. The clothes become supple, the body drier. A few checkered shirts; worn-in work trousers. The suit is more work gear than uniform. In a conversation for Purple Magazine, Alex Israel asks him, in a word: ‘Preppy?’. Lynch: ‘Yes, I like to feel comfortable in my working clothes.’