Paul
Smith reworks his past at Milan menswear salon show
Fashion
elder compères his own celebration of designs revived from his archive by
design director Sam Cotton
Lauren
Cochrane in Milan
Sat 17
Jan 2026 19.51 CET
This
January marks the first menswear fashion week in Milan without a familiar
constant in Giorgio Armani, after the designer died aged 91 in September. But
the brand will still show on Monday, and there are other elder statesmen on the
schedule in the shape of Ralph Lauren, 86, and Paul Smith, who will be 80 this
year.
Paul
Smith showed his collection on Saturday evening at the brand’s Italian HQ. Its
playful nature was evident from the format as Smith himself compèred, with
descriptions of the designs and inspirations over a microphone. The clothes
demonstrated all the hallmarks that fans have come to love – bold prints, great
suiting (this time oversized) and bright colours on sweaters and shirts.
This is
the second time Smith has shown his menswear collection in Milan. At a preview,
he explained the compère format was a homage to the shows he saw as a young man
at the ateliers of Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s.
“I really
wanted to do a salon show,” he said. “Because we’re still an independent
company, and I still own it, it’s so personal in today’s corporate world, I
think it’s really interesting.”
He said
the collection had been partly inspired by collaborating with his new design
director, Sam Cotton, and Cotton’s explorations of 5,000 designs found in the
Paul Smith archive. “They come back and they go: ‘Look at this,’” he says. “I
say: ‘I did that in 1982.’ ‘Yeah, but it’s bloody marvellous.’ And then we
rework it.”
Items
judged to be “bloody marvellous” shown on Saturday include a jacket first seen
in a 1999 collection, and a rust-coloured grandad shirt that, Smith says, “I
dyed on a gas cooker in a saucepan.”
Working
with a different generation, but with items from the brand’s history, is
perhaps a smart way to bring new customers to a label that began in 1970. But
make no mistake – Smith is very much still the boss. “I get there at six every
morning, I’m still completely involved. Nothing’s changed.”
Like many
brands, Paul Smith has felt the effect of a post-pandemic luxury slowdown, with
turnover falling 7% in 2024.
He warns
that the latest news isn’t great either. “Our results this year won’t be very
good at all,” he says. “But we’re here and we’re working it out, and we’re
going to be fine.”
Ralph
Lauren, meanwhile, is more than fine – it’s one of fashion’s current success
stories, partly thanks to a boom in preppy, a style that the brand has
practically patented over nearly 60 years. Sales were up 11% in the first
quarter of 2025, and the phrase “Ralph Lauren Christmas” was trending online
this festive season.
The show
on Friday evening, which combined Polo with the more upmarket Purple label,
felt like a celebration of all the style details that have fuelled the success
of the label since it started in 1967. Although Lauren himself did not travel,
his son David sat in the front row, along with Tom Hiddleston, Colman Domingo
and Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp, in a palazzo bought by Lauren in 1999.
The show
went through clothes to suit the lifestyle of a wealthy wasp, an American
archetype that is now synonymous with the brand. There were the fleeces,
sweatshirts and rugby shirts of weekend wear, suits for the office and a night
at the opera, and even the puffer jackets and boots of a skiing holiday.
As if to
underline the point, the brand will be in Milan again in February – this time
to dress Team USA for the Winter Olympics.
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