Fifty Plus Years: How Paul Smith Has Been Able To Create An Established Brand

PARIS, FRANCE- British designer Paul Smith opens up about his 50 year fashion design history, and ... [+]
his newest AW22 collection unveiled during Paris Fashion Week.

Photo Credit: Paul SMith

Stepping off the busy streets of Paris into the Paul Smith showroom to discover the autumn-winter 2022
women’s ready-to-wear collection is like stepping into the yesteryear of the 1960s. For this new season
Smith dived right into an era of French cinema of New Wave films to tell a sartorial story filled with the
house’s true to form tailoring and lively fall colors.

How it all came to be

But before diving into the collection, it’s worth getting to know the man Sir Paul Smith himself. Born in
Nottingham, England, Smith left school at fifteen to pursue being a racing cyclist. But, it was a bad
bicycle accident that led young Smith to turn from cycling to designing clothes. Fashion was not his first
love. It’s something the designer developed a love for a few years later. Another unique thing about him
is that he’s not trained in fashion design. His wife taught him and with a lot of practice he has created an
established brand. His wife Pauline, his then girlfriend, encouraged Smith to pursue the art of designing
clothes and to open a shop, and what a strong sense she had.

When sitting and talking to Smith, he exudes the saying, “never despise small beginnings,” and small
beginnings did he have. For him he is glad the company did not grow, as he called it, “like a rocket.”

“She [Pauline] and I made the clothes for the shop and then we bought some clothes from young
designers to complement our clothes. That was in 1970 and six years later we started to make a small
collection of clothes to sell to other shops, and she designed those. I didn’t design them, and from 76’-
81’ Pauline designed the clothes and I was in charge of everything else. She then went on to study art
and the history of art, and decided to leave fashion and at that point I was experienced and qualified
enough to take over the reigns as the designer.

Today the brand has 62 stores, owning showrooms in Milan, London, New York, Paris and Tokyo - and
owning its warehouse in Nottingham, and employs close to two-thousand employees. “I’m one of the
few designers who owns their own brand, and there are some amazing and talented designers but they
work for big corporations.” While the brand may not be as big as a corporate brand, Smith is modest
about the success of it. The brand’s fifty-two-year growth is rooted in his love for Pauline, who though
retired, still offers sartorial counsel. And, it’s also due to his humility and sincere kindness to everyone
he meets.

In those early years Paul gained hand’s on know-how by training under a Saville Row tailor, Lincroft and
Kilgour and attending Haute Couture shows in Paris. “I was 21 I was privileged to go to the Haute
Couture shows when couture was only eight or twenty people in the audience of brands that only had
two shows a day for two weeks, no music and only sixteen or twenty outfits. What was remarkable is
that there would be a famous singer, socialite, or someone from the Kennedy family. But there was also
two nuns, and 3-5 young girls aged fifteen or sixteen at nearly every show I went to- Chanel, Saint
Laurent, Courrèges, and Balmain. The reason they were there is the fact the nuns knew they could get a
beautiful career as a seamstress or an embroider in fashion.”
Fashion designer Paul Smith, portrait, London, 1992. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

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The 60s influence on Smith

What’s unique about Smith is that he has an affinity for the ’60s and ’70s and it shows in his collections.
He’s not one to shy away from wide pantlegs at the hems, or throw in pops of colors.

“I was a teenager in the ’60s and I think whenever there is period of time as a human being that’s
impactful, it’s being a youth. This is when you often experience things for the first time like falling in
love, traveling abroad, or seeing a band,” he muses. The 60s was only important to me because I was
young and experienced things for the first time. This was the period of the second and third generations
after the horror of war, and it was the first-time people could actually relax by growing their hair long or
playing the guitar, to just do something that had never really been done before. It was period or
release.”

The collection

And the 60s are very much a part of this collection. Keeping with the times, the world is, in mind, Smith
wanted a collection of pieces that are relaxed. For a long period during the pandemic, people wore
sweats and pajamas. His background in tailoring allowed him to move the boundary of relaxed-wear but
still maintain the tailoring, creating a collection of comfort.

"The cloths are really beautiful, there’s a lot of sustainability aspects or organic aspects to the ... [+]
collection, recycled fabrics and organic fabrics," says Smith of the women's collection

Photo Credit: Casper Kofi for Paul Smith

“The collection is very relaxed and very modern. It means that any woman could wear this collection and
feel very much of now in a beautifully created way. The cloths are really beautiful, there’s a lot of
sustainability aspects or organic aspects to the collection, recycled fabrics and organic fabrics. The
tailoring is constructed in a way that’s very comfortable. So, anyone that has been used to wearing
sweatpants and hoodies can now dress up in a way that’s still comfortable.”

In addition to the tailoring, the cuts are also noticeable. In the men’s looks Smith has created plants with
inverted pleating, giving them a unique flow as one walks. It was Pauline that taught her husband about
balance and proportion with the correct sized pockets, suppression into the waist so that the designer
can respect the female form. For Smith, it’s a collection that he calls, “simple but beautiful.”

“The men’s collection is inspired by the art films from France in the 60s. It’s very much about the color
you were used to seeing in 60s films. It was very experimental at that time, and filters were put onto the
lenses and the colors were slightly distorted,” he shares. And this is quite palpable in the collection, of
the designs being reminiscent of what you would see at that time in film.

“I love my job and I love life,” he says. Retirement doesn’t seem to be on the horizon for the seventy-
five-year-old. “Life is changing very fast with modern communication and a lot of things. The joy of Paul
Smith is continuity. “On my tombstone it will be ‘not bad, he did ok,’” he laughs. While the brand hasn’t
grown like a rocket, its pace has been in line with natural growth as Smith has been able to keep the
company relevant.