MR PORTER celebrates the individual style of the avant-folk singer-songwriter .

“You won’t sound the part if you don’t dress the part,” Mr Devendra Banhart once said. And just as his musical style is unclassifiable – “freak-folk” and “trippy-hippie tone poetry” are just two of the more vivid attempts to brand his mode of troubadouring – so his clothing choices are always idiosyncratic and never less than noteworthy, from the dress he wore in high school (“I was challenging the belief systems of my peers”) to his penchant for cutting down boots in order to create avant-shoes. We should expect nothing less from a man of such singular background and non-binary sensibility (born in Houston, raised in Venezuela, middle-named Obi after Obi-Wan Kenobi, an avid skateboarder, played his first gig at a gay wedding, dated Ms Natalie Portman, collaborated with Antony And The Johnsons, had a song about bestiality used in a mobile phone ad), who’s previously rocked both bindi-and-beard and Native American looks, who boasts multiple tattoos of hermaphrodites, and who once opined: “Old Chinese ladies just have the best style.” Mr Banhart’s ability to take the menswear basics and give them an off-centre edge has been noted previously. To celebrate the release of his new album, Ape In Pink Marble, we present three shining examples of Mr Banhart at his sui generis best.

A few things Mr Banhart isn’t frightened of: failure (“You learn so much more from it than you ever do from success”), Mr R Kelly (Mr Banhart cites the redoubtable Trapped In The Closet auteur as an inspiration, alongside “goats, toupees, trumpets, microphones, shoes and everything in the universe”) and colour. He’s been known to sport more shades than you’ll find in a Farrow & Ball store, a case in point being this Missoni cardigan, which he somehow manages to both dress up (with the striped T-shirt) and down (with the neutral trousers and sockless loafers). It’s a perfect match for the vibrancy and spectrum-spanning elan of Mr Banhart himself.

If you were invited to a charity fundraiser, chances are you wouldn’t immediately reach for your sage green jumpsuit and black slides, but as well as giving the classics a thorough goosing, Mr Banhart can take the most outre of items and combinations and render them, if not workaday, then at least work-an-everyotherday. With the rolled-up sleeves and jaunty turn-ups, Mr Banhart looks equally primed to clean out the pool, write a song about medieval feminists or lobby for fairer spousal-rights legislation. And who’s to say this Renaissance man won’t accomplish all three before the night’s out?

We know that Mr Banhart is super-creative – he strums! He paints! He designs T-shirts! – so it’s no surprise that he totally nails the just-knocked-up-some-kooky-vessels-in-my-West-Hollywood-pottery-barn-and-currently-enjoying-an-aperitif-before-heading-out-to-the-local-ramen-bar look. The jumper and trousers are a masterclass in upscale slouch, and the scuffed Oxfords add an incontrovertible air of boho insouciance. Would-be hipsters, take note – this is how you put the art into artisanal.

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