The kid is wearing a T-shirt reading “EAT MORE AVOCADO,” one of the designs for sale at this Venice Beach café at which he's a server, along with “WE SELL DESIGNER KALE” and “BEET IT.” He's waiting on me and Larry David, who is of course dressed precisely like Larry David—gray knit hoodie, dark long-sleeve T-shirt with a white shirt beneath that, beige jeans, and sneakers. David chooses or approves all the wardrobe for Curb Your Enthusiasm, and then he keeps all the clothes, from blazers to socks, creating a seamless visual loop between Larry and the character he calls TV Larry.

So Larry David is sitting there, using his very Larry David voice to discuss very Larry David things: breakfast preferences (today, scrambled egg whites, grilled onions, and sliced avocado), the relative pleasures of killing flies and ants (flies are more satisfying), and yes, clothes, about which, unsurprisingly, David has Thoughts. The son of a garment-district salesman, David has always approached clothing with something of a tailor's eye. The very first Seinfeld gag was about shirt-button placement; the first Curb Your Enthusiasm centered on a crotch cut too big, thus simulating an erection. He has a code: One should wear only one “nice” piece of clothing at a time. “Otherwise it's too much,” he says. “Too dressed. You have to be half-dressed. That's my fashion theory, since you asked: Half Is More.”

Larry David covers the February issue of GQ. Click here to subscribe to GQ. Shirt, by Salvatore Ferragamo / T-shirt, by Cotton Citizen / Pants, by James Perse

In nearly two decades of interviewing people for this fashion magazine, I have rarely spent even this much time discussing fashion. But then I've seldom profiled a Fashion Icon. Is there a more recognizable, self-assured, incredibly specific wardrobe to be found anywhere in pop culture? The tear-shaped Oliver Peoples glasses alone have now approached a Groucho Marx or John Lennon level of personal identification. David has worn them since the early 1990s. He used to own only two pairs, until a suitably paranoid producer recently went on a worldwide hunt and came up with a few backups. They were the first thing he grabbed last October, when the Getty Fire forced him to evacuate his Pacific Palisades home.

“Jerry said I dressed like an Upper West Side communist,” David says, referring to the Jerry with whom he created Seinfeld, back in 1989. I think of the look as Alpha TV Writer: In a profession where status is measured by how casually and comfortably one can arrive at work, David's wardrobe qualifies as a kind of normcore bling.

In the course of all this pleasant kibitzing, David's decaf Americano has gone tragically tepid. He beckons to the Avocado Kid, who has hovered nearby.

“Let me ask you,” David says. “To make this a little hotter, you have to make a whole new thing, right?”

“Or dilute it,” says the server. “But we'll probably just make a whole new thing.”

“I'm going to tell you in advance, I'm only going to drink about this much of it,” says David, fingers measuring a tiny pinch.

“It is what it is,” the kid says agreeably.

“You know what? Put it in the microwave.”

“We don't have a microwave.”

“Okay,” says David. “Let's forget it.” The kid shrugs, apologizes, and withdraws as David and I return to our discussion, which has now moved on to his disdain for the supposed innovation of UNTUCKit shirts: “Like nobody ever wore their shirt out and noticed that it was too long? We all noticed.…”