It’s a cold February day in London and half-naked androgynous looking models are frantically changing out of Sir Paul Smith’s latest creations probably late to their next London fashion show. Make-up artists and hairstylists are buzzing around too, picking up all their pieces and packing up. The modern fashion world doesn’t have time to stand around patting itself on the back. Sir Paul though stands around carrying himself like the eye of the storm. Smith is a designer with focus and vision. You’d be hard pressed not to be if you were sitting on a brand name with annual revenue in excess of half a billion USD. “I think a lot of designers go through fashion college and they don’t have any experience of actually selling the clothes. They don’t understand how clothes are sold or marketed. But from the age of fifteen I was working in a small shop so I understood quite clearly who paid the rent, which was somebody called the customer,” he says in an English accent that slightly betrays his northern heritage.
Truth be told, Sir Paul was an unlikely candidate for the job of fashion pioneer. He peddled into the industry quite literarily and very much by accident. At the age of 16, wanting to become a professional cyclist, he got on his bike and started racing only to find himself in a life-altering accident. “I ended up in hospital, following which I used to spend a lot of time in the local pub in my home town of Nottingham where all the art students used to go. And that really is the reason that I am standing here talking to you now. It sort of opened my world to all aspects of design, not just fashion, but art and architecture and so on,” he says laughing either at his bizarre luck or at a painful memory that somehow, by a twist of fate, bore golden fruits.
Smith is a tall, thin and unassuming man with a messy crop of neck-length grey hair giving him the look of a stylish and somewhat aged hippie with a passion for the colourful and the unconventional. He grew up listening to the pulsating revolutionary tunes of The Rolling Stones and Miles Davis and admiring the creative expressions of pop artist icon Andy Warhol, the hypnotic photography of David Bailey and Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoshka. For Smith, there should be very little difference between the world of art and the world of fashion, “Often with art, I’ll give you a rather obvious example, Henri Matisse was a master of colour and you can look at his painting ‘The Snail’ and wonder how on earth he imagined putting those colours together. That’s just part of lateral thinking and the world outside. So definitely you can take a lot of inspiration from the colour and composition of art,” he says.
Perhaps art and colour were the inspiration for his trademark stripes which, since he began to woo the fashion world in 1976, have been being snapped up by men desperate for a certain distinguishing look. The stripes themselves are fun-loving and quirky thanks to Smith’s ability to turn a mundane pattern into cool wear. It is a testament to his flair for fashion that the stripes – on socks, shirts and furniture, you name it and it’s there – have far outlasted its paisley or polka dot counterparts. Asked what life would look like if it was a series of stripes, the designer assuredly replies, “Mine!” – laughing heartily at the idea that he is in such a good place right now. And many have tried, in vain, to imitate his style which irritates him no end. But surely, Sir Paul, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? “Imitation or copying is flattering but also massively annoying because someone is getting your ideas free of charge,” he scoffs.
The British designer currently has 12 eponymous brands to his name (including a men’s clothing line, a women’s clothing line, a furniture and things line, shoes, jeans, accessories, et al) in 35 countries as far flung as London and Japan. Across the latter Asian country, he has opened an astounding 200 shops. Yet here in the Middle East he is not as omnipresent as he could be. Perhaps it’s because Smith fashions his collection for the tall, thin and narrow-boned man, which presumably would make it difficult for him to sell in the Middle East. But Smith shrugs that off immediately, “The Middle East has been incredibly successful for us. A lot of it has to do with the products, as there is a modernity about the clothes that is often searching back to tradition. For instance a lot of the fabrics we use like the small checks look like very old English but one of the fabrics is taffeta, one of the fabrics is cashmere and one of the fabrics is worsted so even though they look like traditional clothes when you touch them and see how they react to the body they are in fact very modern,” he says.
There is indubitable genius to a man who had very little education in fashion design and has still managed to be one of the industry’s best loved sons. But he also has something that many other fashion graduates of his generation lacked and that’s business acumen. Asked about the secret of his success, Smith leans in his tall frame a little and says, “It’s really about getting the balance, understanding that clothes are about somebody buying them somewhere and if you designed indulgent clothes that are very particular then they might look great on the catwalk, get great reviews – but they don’t pay the rent.”
Contact:
Paul Smith Kuwait
Al Fanar Centre
Salmaniya, Kuwait
Tel +965 6746923
Paul Smith UAE
Burjuman Centre
Dubai, UAE
Tel +971 43590099
Paul Smith KSA
Al Khayatt
Jeddah, KSA
Tel +9662 2842801
Paul Smith KSA
The Kingdom
Riyadh, KSA
Tel +9661 2112564
