What The Strokes really brought to party was street-smart swagger. Attitude … and style. Perhaps no artist of the era was more attuned to the primal power of simply looking good. It was the banned buttocks of the band’s infamous debut album cover that made the headlines, but 22 years on, it’s Is This It’s rear sleeve image of five young, rakish, carefree and devilishly handsome guys in denim that endures in the popular imagination. “Back in 2002 … The Strokes called the style shots in New York,” remembered GQ in 2009, already nostalgic for an era then only just lived through.

Central to that style was a uniformity of skinny jeans and skinnier ties. Of high waistlines and short blazers. Or else, biker jackets, jeans and frayed vintage T-shirts. Occasionally, lumpy grandad jumpers, and even velvet. Maybe a military jacket here or there. (Too?) often: lager bottles and unlit cigarettes. Let’s not forget drummer Fab Moretti’s Coca-Cola shirts. And always, always – lots of Converse.

Everything looked, at least, like a second-hand thrift-store find. It all matched the music – simultaneously snappy but dishevelled. An aesthetic of looking scruffy and thrown-together – the antithesis of 80s rock glam. But of course they were anything but. “I don’t care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence,” lead singer Julian Casablancas told GQ in the same piece. “Or maybe helps you pick up chicks.”

“The first time I met him he was wearing a f****** suit,” remembers the guitarist Nick Valensi, in Lizzy Goodman’s aural history of the era, Meet Me in the Bathroom (named after a nod-wink Strokes song). “We were all wearing jeans and T-shirts and New Balance sneakers and Albert showed up in a suit. Everybody all of a sudden was like, ‘Okay, hold on a second, let’s start thinking about this’.”

And think about it they did. The big idea was to wear “stage clothes” every day, whether they had a gig or not. To behave like rock stars before anyone knew who they were. And if you book them, they will come.

Even their names – Julian Casablancas, Nikolai Fraiture, Fabrizio Moretti – sounded made up, the stuff of rock myth. And let’s take a moment to remember the hair. The five-piece all had amazing hair – simultaneously foppish but macho, thrown together but carefully styled, never too long nor too short.

As scene contemporary Justine D, a DJ, remembers in Wright’s book of first encountering the band: “I walked in and I thought … ‘They’re all really good looking.’ You don’t see that very often. Like, where they sound good and all the band members are handsome.”

“That’s that what made them so appealing,” seconds Rough Trade Records manager Kelly Kiley, who would sign the band in the UK. “In a weird way they were like a boy band.”

And then there was the wave of bands who got signed in the slipstream, often as indebted to The Strokes’ sense of style as much their music: The Cribs, The Rakes, The Thrills, even The Libertines ...

In an unlikely twist, Hammond Jr. even scored his own highly limited line of suits at LA’s Confederacy, styled by Ilaria Urbinati, who called the heavily detailed designs “a good mix of old man, hunter and 70s rock ’n’ roll”.

This “gang-like” consistency of style couldn’t be maintained as the corrupting influences of fame, money and substances rolled in, and more dubious individual style decisions would be made. Over time, Casablancas sought out ever more ostentatious jackets – often leather – as his body type evolved in later years, as well as displaying a dubious affection for neon-bright trainers and embracing an apparent reliance on loud shades, the ultimate rock star cliché.

The shoot as Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont might all be baked in a certain amount of knowing nostalgia (Bob Dylan was notably next in line), but the enduring legacy of The Strokes on fashion is beyond dispute – and their heyday style choices hold up nearly as well as the music they accompanied.

The Strokes perform at AsiaWorld Expo, Hong Kong, on July 16, 9pm; then touring Asia. See HK Ticketing.