If you’re presenting yourselves as a group of electro-Germanic robots, it stands to reason that you dress identically. For their 1978 album Die Mensch-Maschine (The Man Machine), the Düsseldorf-based Kraftwerk created a look to reflect their mechanical, minimalist musical style (which they described with typical deadpan wryness as “Germany’s answer to Beach Boys”). With bright-red shirts and matching lipstick, skinny black ties, grey trousers and slicked-back, jet-black hair, they took on android personas that have stuck for the rest of their career. As band member Mr Florian Schneider said, they “eliminated the musician completely by using sequencers, rhythm machines and computers.” The logical progression to this was to replace themselves with automatons.

Le Corbusier’s signature style of smart, three-piece suit, bow tie and thick-framed glasses has become something of a cliché – for many it has become shorthand style for “genius architect”. The French-Swiss polymath (he was also a writer, painter, urban planner and product designer) is regarded as the godfather of modern architecture. While his personal style may have been far more traditional, it reveals his commitment to timeless simplicity and elegance. “To be modern is not a fashion, it is a state,” he said. “He who understands history knows how to find continuity between that which was, that which is, and that which will be.”

New York’s proto-punks were never seen dressed in anything other than their uniform of ripped jeans, leather jackets, tight T-shirts, sneakers and sunglasses: an ubiquitous look around the world today, but one that they did more than anyone to popularise. “All punk is, is attitude,” said band leader Mr Joey Ramone. “That’s what makes it.” This spirit of individualism, freedom – championing the outsider and the underdog – was given form in their clothes. By embracing the pejorative term “punk” and owning it, their choice of dress reflected the downtrodden, working-class street kids that they gave a voice to.

One of the pioneers of modern jazz, Mr Thelonious Monk was never one for the convention. His signature look is a mod-style three-button suit and skinny tie, always topped off by a distinctive hat. His choice of headwear evolved from beatnik berets and skullcaps to his trademark wool or fur papakha (traditionally worn throughout the Caucasus). This typified his unorthodox, eccentric approach to his art: improvising and breaking the accepted rules whenever the mood took him (“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes”). Similarly, wearing a Cossack hat with a suit was fair game to him: after all, as he once announced, “A dose of class is a hat”.

For many the archetype of the gentleman photographer, Mr Bill Cunningham was an unmistakeable and perennial presence at catwalk shows throughout the world’s fashion capitals, always dressed in his trademark indigo-blue French workman’s jacket. Paired with a smart shirt and chinos, Cunningham’s jacket was a discovery from a French hardware store (reportedly costing him $20). With four accessible pockets for his film, it was a practical, hardwearing choice for his work – and one that inspired a global trend among understated hipsters. Cunningham famously described fashion as “the armour to survive the reality of everyday life” – for some, this means hiding behind a persona, ­for him it just meant something to help him do his job better.

Like Obama, Mr Steve Jobs opted to wear the same outfit every day: a black Issey Miyake turtleneck, Levi’s 501 jeans and New Balance 991 sneakers. It was a case of efficacy over aesthetics. The Apple co-founder and CEO knew better than anyone else about information overload, which is why he chose to streamline his wardrobe decisions so he could concentrate on problem-solving. Jobs told his biographer Mr Walter Isaacson that his choice of dress was based on “daily convenience” as well as “its ability to convey a signature style”. In short: once you’ve decided how you want to look, why waste the brain space questioning it?

“I’ve dressed the same way since 1965,” says Lancastrian performance poet Mr John Cooper Clarke. There’s a significance to that date. Google “Bob Dylan 1965” and play spot the difference. While he admits to other influences, they all draw from rock ’n’ roll’s classic era and reveal a classic style maxim: if in doubt, pick someone else’s best look and run with it. But what Cooper Clarke calls his “default look” – a shock of untamed hair coupled with a monochrome get-up of white shirt, slimline black jacket, ultra-skinny jeans and Chelsea boots – also has a more prosaic explanation: “I’m red/green colour-blind, so [colour] is an area of anxiety for me.”

Fashion designers have a unique dilemma: how to satisfy the constant need for the “new” through the endless schedule of seasons and collections, while maintaining a consistency of approach; accepting the applause while not upstaging the main attraction. No one gets the balance quite so well as Mr Yohji Yamamoto, whose refined, elegant attire never waivers: a distinctive silhouette of three-quarter-length coat, wide-brimmed hat and chunky shoes, like a logo stamped against the backdrop. “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time,” he says. “Black is lazy and easy, but mysterious. But above all, black says this: ‘I don’t bother you – don’t bother me.’”

Sharp three-piece suit? Check. Black tie? Check. Absent-minded professor hair? Check. Philosopher, activist and social critic Dr Cornel West is a hugely respected academic, focusing on the often-contentious subjects of race, gender and class. As such, he has a fine line to tread in terms of projecting a public image (which includes appearances in the Matrix films and on various albums). His dress conveys a voice of authority while defying authority. “Part of it is I do have a limited sartorial imagination,” he admits. “Part of it is it just makes me feel good… my uniform. Secondly, [quoting from Ephesians], I’ve also got my armour on… because life is a battlefield.”

For some, the way they choose to dress is an art. For others, their art is in the way they dress. This is never truer than in the case of Mr Gilbert Prousch and Mr George Passmore, performance artists and partners. Married since 2008 (having met while at Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1967), the couple not only appear in their own multimedia images but exist as living sculptures – and are always dressed impeccably in formal tweed or light patterned suits. “The suits are very good because they are odd,” says George. “They enable us to get away with a lot.”