Being hailed as a style icon would probably amuse Mark E Smith, the brilliant, cantankerous frontman of the Fall who died yesterday, a man whose vanity could be neatly surmised in his decision, aged 55, to get his black bottom teeth lightened to a deep yellow to match the top row of teeth. But there was certainly a look, hewn from an anti-fashion fashion, which would become one of several constants in the band’s ever-changing image. The now infamous John Peel observation, “They are always different; they are always the same” referred to their live performance, but he could easily have been talking about one of Smith’s creased leather jackets.

Mark E Smith on stage. Photograph: Mick Hutson/Redferns

Smith saw himself as a beacon of normality. For starters, there was almost always a tight, crisp shirt to perform in, the sort that the Kinks’s Dave Davies wore, but probably cheaper. It’s unlikely that, in the 1970s, Smith’s were Vivienne Westwood, although the oversized collar suggests at least some handle on the decade’s fashion. On stage, these shirts were usually unbuttoned twice, sometimes colourful, and worn under a V-neck. By the early 80s, he leaned more towards white shirts, which he started buttoning up. It was a uniform that, like the music, grew tighter and sharper. But there were flourishes of masculinity, even vanity, which reappeared again and again: the high-waisted trousers, the trimmed moppish hair and the rather excellent leather jackets (which came cropped, or long and creased in perhaps PVC). On stage, Smith wavered between a schoolboy and accidental Hedi Slimane muse. Only his face gave his age away.

Cool begets cool: Smith wears a creased-leather coat with giant buttons. Photograph: Gabor Scott/Redferns

While influential bands such as the Stooges and Can appeared to consider what they wore – not least dressing for their time – from the offset, Smith turned aggressively towards a more purposeful blandness, making it impossible to age him or place the band in the context of the late 70s/early 80s Mancunian music scene. But cool begets cool, and Smith would later trade NME centrefolds for interviews in Fantastic Man. He was, of course, a muse for Fred Perry. Indeed, one particular shoot, involving a white shirt, creased-leather coat with giant buttons, shot in front of an orange wall could be straight from the autumn/winter Balenciaga campaign.

By the early 80s, he had cut his hair and met Brix Smith Start, a bass player from LA, who would become his wife and the band’s lead guitarist. Now a successful fashion businesswoman, she was largely credited with inspiring the band to dress more sharply, although she later denied this. Still, things did seem to take a sartorial turn by the late 80s. The odd Argyle knit. Sometimes, a dark cricket-style jumper or even a baseball jacket. But the shirts were always there. On their song Repetition, he explained, “we’ve repetition in the music, and we’re never going to lose it”. This served as a manifesto for the Fall’s music, but also, perhaps, Smith’s shirts.

A mural showing Mark E Smith in an Argyle jumper.

Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Smith was over 6ft tall, but walked and performed with a stoop, which later caused him back trouble. He often performed with his back to the audience, still in those shirts, and dwarfed by his leather jacket even in summer. Sweating didn’t seem to bother him. The shirt and leather had become his twinset. Later, he became marginally more self-conscious. “I only really look in a mirror before I go on stage, in case I’ve got anything on my face” he once told this newspaper, admitting he did own a comb. “It’s good to look a bit straight: a clean shirt and all that.”

Smith on stage in 1982. Photograph: David Corio/Redferns

The Fall were part of a post-punk scene, weighted by emotion, wisdom and geography, but Smith was an outsider, a performer who performed over the music rather than with it, but it was this outsider image that infected his offbeat style and made him stand out. Despite the alleged 66 band members and their shifting sound, which moved from punk to post-punk to electronic (and even a ballet score), much like Smith the music was never about being hip, which obviously made it hipper.