Paul
Smith uses dad’s photography to inspire Paris fashion week show
Intimate,
eccentric show launches set of modern pieces made with traditional techniques
and vintage touches
Chloe Mac
Donnell
Wed 22 Jan
2025 18.20 GMT
Paul Smith
regularly takes inspiration from his travels but for his latest collection,
shown in Paris on Wednesday afternoon, he stuck a little closer to home.
The amateur
photography collection of his dad, Harold B Smith, served as his starting
point. Guests entered the venue through a mocked-up dark room complete with
buckets of emulsion, strung-up negatives and a stainless steel sink. A booklet
featuring some of the work of Smith senior, a founding member of the Beeston
camera club in Nottinghamshire, was left on each seat.
Rather than
a standard catwalk show, models came out in groups of three as Smith talked
through each look. This intimate approach contrasted sharply with the
gargantuan spectacles that have become luxury fashion’s standard. At Smith’s
gathering, the guest list hovered around the 200 mark. At Louis Vuitton the
night before, there were close to 2,000.
“We’re not
one of the big groups, so what can you do,” he mused backstage when asked about
his approach. “The asset is a human being who can chat about things.”
And chat he
did. Smith may be only a couple of years off his 80th birthday but he is
showing no signs of switching to the slow lane. Instead, he leapt about,
enthusing over fabrics, cuts, the line on a glove, the height of a shoe and his
father’s messy doodles that he used as prints across knitwear and tailoring.
At one
stage, he pulled a mooing toy cow out of a bag. At another, a plastic egg out
of a shoe – his signature glorious, grey bouffant adding to the mad professor
vibe. This was British eccentricity at its finest, only heightened by some
slightly confused French editors who remained poker-faced throughout.
Smith
mentioned that his father was an observant man, often capturing “little moments
that other people would have missed”. This gene seems to have been passed down
to Smith junior.
He’s a
stickler for detail, even on those elements that cannot be seen. Corduroy
trousers were printed on the inside to give a vintage effect, while the linings
of jackets featured blown-up prints from his father’s negatives. Ties and
shirts were designed in matching fabrics, a trick he picked up from his friend,
the photographer David Bailey, who originally learned the technique from his
stint in the Royal Air Force.
While these
were clothes designed for a modern man, Smith used traditional techniques and
fabrics to ensure they stand the test of time. Some trousers were made from
thornproof tweed, originally designed for hunters to withstand brambles. An
upcoming collaboration with Barbour includes a playful twist on its signature
parkas, while detachable hoods can be mixed and matched.
He also
dived into his own archive. Clingy knitted jumpers in satsuma orange and plum
stemmed from the form-fitting jumpers he used to dress clients including David
Bowie in during the 70s. Back then, he couldn’t afford to make them, so instead
used to buy jumpers from the schoolboy section in his local department store.
While the
mood in the room was buoyant, it’s been a challenging time for the brand,
between Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine (Smith shuttered his Russian stores
in 2023) and the loss of tax-free shopping for tourists. It has suffered five
straight years of losses, with latest figures showing a pre-tax loss of £5.3m
for the 12 months to 30 June 2024, compared with a loss of £2.3m in the year
prior.
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