In 1976, the BBC visited British painter David Hockney at his studio for an edition of cultural magazine show The Book Programme. The segment opens with the artist and a colleague discussing plans for a new work, soundtracked by a clipped, RP voice-over. “Hockney dyes his hair yellow and wears gig lamps,” the voice says. “A treat, really, since these days painters seem to look like anyone else.”

The film then cuts to Hockney in conversation with the host, Robert Robinson, and the pair appear as aesthetic binaries. Robinson, the institutional broadcaster, is funereally packaged in a black suit and tie, heavy newsreader spectacles, and an ill-executed comb over.

Hockney, then in his late thirties, is at ease in an open-necked (and proudly untucked) pinstripe shirt, pleated trousers, those round and roomy “gig lamp” glasses, a gold dress watch and that perpetual puckish grin. Robinson’s assertion that Hockney looked like “anyone else” was perhaps a wider aside on how the sartorial world had commenced its great casualisation. But despite its simplicity, Hockney’s style was, and still is, singular.

Half a century later, a new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in central London – titled David Hockney: A Year In Normandie And Some Other Thoughts About Painting – offers the opportunity to explore the idiosyncrasies of the Yorkshireman’s wardrobe once again. Talking about an artist’s choice of clothing can sometimes feel trivial, but with Hockney, the core tenets of his work are mirrored in his sense of style.

Take his pool paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are all clean lines, soft blues contrasted with pastels and rich, sun-soaked jewel tones. There is no gradient or blur, just blocks of colour and pattern, and his clothing followed suit. Striped rugby shirts with crisp white collars, dusty blue seersucker tailoring worn with yellow shoes and odd socks, spotted bow ties, sun-yellow collegiate sweaters. He was (and remains) the walking embodiment of his artwork, but unlike his canvases, it never felt especially contrived. Always a little scruffy and a little paint-spattered, as if he had just grabbed what was hanging from the nearest chair.

“He’s like Dick Van Dyke living in the painting,” says Luke Walker, founder of British clothing brand LEJ, and the former head of menswear at Dunhill. A decade or so ago, under the creative direction of John Ray, Dunhill took inspiration from Hockney (as well as painter Lucian Freud and photographer Harry Diamond) for its AW15 collection. It was jammed with those candy-tone rugby shirts, pastel knitwear, chunky corduroy and art-school accessories. I remember the model Lucky Blue Smith, then a teenager, in rounded specs and a shock of blond hair striding down the runway like an AI-filtered replica of the artist himself.

“He was a massive influence,” Walker says of Hockney. “Because he ruffles the feathers. He’s the antithesis of that rule-ridden system of dressing and incredibly idiosyncratic. And kind of a pioneer.”

Twenty or so seasons later, and Hockney’s sartorial legacy is still very much visible in mainstream fashion. There are deep dusty blues and beachy geometric prints at Giorgio Armani and baggy tube socks and yellow knitwear at The Row. Replete with deep-V striped polo shirts, soft, roomy tailoring and cerise overcoats, the SS26 collection by Dries Van Noten seems as though it could have been lifted right from Hockney’s own wardrobe.

Elsewhere, much has been made of the return of preppy style and the codes of Ivy dressing, something Hockney is often aligned with. But as Walker points out, Hockney took mid-century collegiate style and made it his own, especially in the early days of his renown.

“When he was at art college, late 1950s, 1960s era, [his style] is almost timeless,” Walker says. “Shetland jumper, pair of jeans and a rugby shirt. And it’s [the same as] everything that’s happening now. [But] he was so much more playful with it – almost ‘art school’ Ivy.” No better is that attitude typified than in 1972’s Portrait Of David Hockney, a short film in which we see the artist working on “Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy” in a yellow dress shirt and penny loafers.

What Hockney seemed to realise, along with contemporary pop artist Andy Warhol, was that there was a value in mythmaking and creating a personal brand. The spectacles and the blond hair and the wild colour combinations became as much a hallmark of the Hockney-verse as the work itself. “I would dare say that Hockney wasn’t interested in colours that go together in his personal dressing,” Walker says. “It was a little more obnoxious.”

Perhaps that’s the true style lesson to be taken from Hockney – that it’s not so much about colour (although a blue seersucker suit can go a long way), but more about attitude. And as he’s proven, rebellion can be as simple as a pinstripe shirt and a pair of gig-lamp spectacles.