‘I’m obsessed with clowns,” says actor David Arquette, plucking a suit jacket from a clothing rack. “I think clowns get a bad name! I actually was talking to my wife [Courteney Cox Arquette] one time, and I was like, ‘Well, if I was to be myself, I’d probably dress as a clown every day, to be honest with you.’ ”
Arquette is standing in the Los Angeles showroom of his clothes line, propr, which has just expanded to more New York stores such as Scoop, Saturdays and Revolve this year. His line of T-shirts, woven button-downs, denim and suits ranging from $48 to $295 is far more conservative than his own personal taste. This, after all, is the same guy who wore a bright green suit to present a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Kermit the Frog, and attended the opening night of “The Pee-wee Herman Show” dressed as Pee-wee Herman.
So how does a guy with circus taste end up inside the ring of New York fashion?
“I love using clothes to express your feelings and emotions and to define you,” says Arquette. And sometimes, it seems, one outfit just can’t express all he feels in a day. “When we have big parties at our house, I change costumes,” he says. “I go through a bunch. I’m like Cher!” Though, unlike Cher, he rarely wishes he could turn back time: “A lot of people look back on pictures and think, ‘Oh my God, what was I doing?’ I like to do it that day.”
Actress Courteney — his wife of 10 years, the conservatively stylish TV star — surely must wince at such fashion folly. “I think she likes it,” Arquette says. “I don’t think she’d want someone who dressed just normal all the time.”
Then he laughs. “Though I came out the other day, and she said, ‘You are aware you’re wearing a jumpsuit aren’t you?’ ” It was, literally, a jumpsuit. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me! It was a vintage jumpsuit with Ringling Brothers on it.”
Born in 1971 on a commune in Virginia, Arquette’s parents encouraged him and his siblings — Patricia, Rosanna, Alexis and Richmond — to be creative. His father, Lewis Arquette, who played the character J.D. Pickett on “The Waltons,” went through a bit of a “dapper” clothing phase in the ’60s. His grandfather Cliff Arquette played the Charley Weaver character on “The Hollywood Squares,” always dressed in the rumpled shirt, suspenders, a floppy hat and wire-rimmed spectacles.
Arquette’s first impressions of style were “bell-bottoms, Elvis and Liberace on TV.” And now, though he looks up to current designers such as Paul Smith, his fashion icons are “Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Kid,’ with just a rope to tie around his pants,” says Arquette. “I like when there’s a whimsical air to the way you dress.”
It’s what draws Arquette to vintage shops like Decades and Golyester in LA and Resurrection in New York, and why the propr showroom is decked out like a vintage shop: A full-size wax figure of Winston Churchill stands in one corner, a jellybean portrait of Ronald Reagan hangs next to it, and a table made from a “Clockwork Orange” Milk Bar mannequin holds up a few T-shirts.
The public seems to have embraced his eclectic style (propr will double worldwide to 15 stores this year), although there are still fashion faux pas even he can’t get away with.
Arquette and his wife were in London for the “Scream 2” premiere when he walked into the room dressed in “essentially, a see-through plastic costume suit. And she was like, ‘Oh. No. Absolutely not. Are you kidding? There’s no way in hell you’re wearing that.’ And I was like, Yeah, you’re right.”
So he changed? “I’ve changed quite a bit,” he says. He attributes his more subdued style now to the fact that he doesn’t want to embarrass his daughter Coco, 5. But he still enjoys some fashion flair. “I’d rather have a big fashion no-no than have no fashion style whatsoever.”