J.B Smoove proves Curb Your Enthusiasm is actually about fashion

In 17 years, J.B. Smoove’s Leon Black has gone from comically dressed to totally on trend.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is a show about life’s amusing miseries.

It is also, so often, a show about clothes.

The show’s very first episode The Pants Tent, from 24(!) years ago, dealt with the suffocating awkwardness of having excess fabric around one’s crotch. Decades on, and now in its (supposed) final season, Larry David and his band of merry moaners are still obsessed with wardrobe malfunctions: An episode from a few weeks ago revolved around a pair of all-too-exposing men’s athletic shorts.

In its twelve seasons, “Curb” has also minted veritable fashion icons. There’s David, the show’s irascible Dad Style champion, and Susie Greene (played by Susie Essman), the kooky Larry-baiter who is in her element when raiding the clearance rack at Loehmann’s.

And then there’s J.B. Smoove’s Leon Black, a WTF, DGAF style icon for the ages.

J.B. Smoove’s Leon Black with Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Picture: HBO/ BINGE

Most characters on Curb dress like a bowl of unseasoned oatmeal. But Leon dresses like a barrel of Froot Loops. He wears nightmarish Hawaiian shirts and cow-printed cardigans from Supreme. He has a rainbow assortment of durags, which he matches to calf-high socks. Sometimes he tosses in the random, inexplicable, Versace denim jacket.

Leon’s clothes could be designer, or they could have been purchased from a gas station clearance rack. It’s impossible to tell and that’s the beauty, and insanity, of Leon’s style.

And broadly speaking, Leon is on trend! In an era when fashion designers preach individuality and personality, Leon is their guy. This is a man who mixes the high (Japanese designers) with the low (voluminous athletic shorts.) He doesn’t just like patterns, he’s rarely passed a gaudy pattern shirt he wouldn’t wear. In the 17 years that the character has been on “Curb,” the fashion world has finally caught up to Leon Black.

“You’re wondering where the hell does Leon get money to buy that cool sweater or those cool jeans?” said Smoove, who has been stealing scenes as Leon since 2007. “He’s like Snuffleupagus, you don’t know where this guy comes from.”

J.B. Smoove joined the show in season six. Picture: HBO/ BINGE

Leon joined the show in the sixth season, in a convoluted plot line about the Davids taking in a family of hurricane refugees. The rest of his family has since left, but Leon remains. He is the sprinkles on the show’s cake, there to burst in every three or so scenes and dispense some madcap aphorism, or what Smoove called “that good bad advice.”

As Smoove sees it, Leon’s clothes are how you “know his temperature” in a given episode. If he’s got sweats and slides on, “you know he’s just lamping that day.” A puckish patterned shirt might spell mischief. A fan-favourite episode in season 7 saw Leon change it up with a suit and bowtie to masquerade as the square accountant “Danny Duberstein.”

“Leon’s a hustler, baby,” said Smoove. “He pulls off stuff when he has to.”

The actor works with the show’s longtime costume designer Leslie Schilling to give shape to Leon’s oddball outfits. “I have an awesome amount of stuff to choose from and we literally make the puzzle, we pick out what goes with what,” said Smoove. “You have an arsenal of 50 durags. You just start to match them up with your silk shirt that goes over your tank top.”

To fill out those sleeveless shirts that Leon wears as he shuffles around Chez David, Smoove, who remains quite fit at 58, clocks extra time in the gym. “I want Leon to look good in those tank tops,” said Smoove, “He’s a tank top king.”

As much as he respects Leon’s ludicrous looks, Smoove stressed that he and his character’s respective fashion senses occupy “two different universes all together.”

Off screen, Smoove, a native of North Carolina, is a funny man who is serious about his clothes. Where Leon is raucous, Smoove is raffish. “My suit game is impeccable. I could wear a suit everyday,” said Smoove, who could make a mint if he ever found a way to bottle his confidence.

Leon Black shows off his inimitable fashion style. Picture: HBO/ BINGE

The actor says he buys his custom suits from tailors like London’s Joshua Kane. In recent talk-show appearances to promote this last season of “Curb,” Smoove’s style has been very ’70s- Vegas-nightclub-host — pinstripe suits, satellite-dish fedoras and paisley shirts. Last month, he rolled up to “The Tonight Show” in an all-black outfit, with a waistcoat in lieu of a blazer, looking like the big bad in a western film. “You look like a stud as always,” praised Jimmy Fallon.

Smoove says he owns more than 50 cowboy boots and 30 cowboy hats. “I’ve been killing the western style for years!” he said. A recent trip to Ghana also sparked a fascination with printed sets from designer Kwaku Bediako’s brand Chocolate. “That gets heads turning, when you walk into a room with a nice two-piece African print.”

J.B. Smoove loves a tank top. Picture: HBO/ BINGE

They may dress worlds apart, but Smoove harbours a soft spot for certain Leon looks. He praised an orange cactus-printed cardigan that his character wore in this season’s opener and the billowing gym shorts that he and David both wore a few episodes later. (In a cheeky easter egg, those were made by the micro clothing brand Old Jewish Men of New York.)

Overall, this season has seen Leon go lux. More Versace, more Jordans, more $600ish Sacai button-ups that look like a Peter Max-designed tablecloth. So potent is Leon’s style that Smoove could see his character doing a bit of modelling. “I feel like Leon could walk down the runway …. and get his ass thrown out by security.”

Too bad “Curb” is coming to a close, sounds like the start of a great episode.

The Wall Street Journal