“I think I’ve still got a lot of energy,” said Paul Smith, and he does. Yet time’s tarnish will dull even the freshest outlook, and 55 years after founding his (still independent) company Smith has certainly seen it all before. Which is why this season he took advantage of a pair of fresh eyes.
Sam Cotton was appointed head of men s design at Paul Smith six months ago. Smith first met and mentored Cotton when he was one half of the London Collections: Men era new-wave favorites Agi Sam. Since then he has put in shifts at Valentino and Lemaire. Until, said Smith, “I hauled him in.”
Alongside Helen Holmes, charged with overseeing the knit and jersey offer, Cotton and the design team went on a deep dive through the 5,000-ish archive of Smith-smithed garments that the company keeps in Nottingham. “We wanted to look for examples of new modern sartorialism,” said Cotton. “When we were there, what we found was the actual process of deconstruction of the suit. So apart from the inside-out suit that Paul did in 1999 and which everyone else went on to copy afterwards, we discovered his re-engineering of the garment.” They discovered so much, in fact, that this collection incorporated re-fashioned ideas and garments drawn from 14 archive Smith collections.
The designer himself was wearing a white Western shirt with pearlescent buttons on its unusually arranged angular pocket flaps that he thought hailed “from around ’89,” he said, adding: “this one is from the archive and it fits me!” This shirt had been revived and updated and placed against a full suit jacket whose interior construction was delineated by yellow topstitching. Another shirt was illustrated with sketches by Colin Barnes: These hailed from a show in 1978 when Smith had failed to book any photographers so had to rely on the artist to retain a visual imprint of that season’s collection on its Paris runway. The inside-out suits were here, of course.
Archive Fair Isle designs that broke the traditional harmony of pattern were reimagined in wool alpaca. These were sometimes worn as scarfs atop belted harris tweed overcoats finished to be smooth rather than prickly to the touch. Tailored hunting jackets in dark donegal tweed or blue twill featured map pockets at the right hip. A languidly loose dark blue suit featured gently cinched pleated pants and a double-breasted jacket that dropped quite low at the waist—this was worn over a matching-color bib shirt to create a look that was simultaneously formal, relaxed, and sophisticated. Tie designs were drawn from an archive containing enough of them to outfit a 1980s ad agency several times over and the handsome suede satchel-totes were revivals of a design from the same decade.
Smith’s enthusiasm at reacquainting himself with all these workplace exes was matched by his admiration at their reimagining. Both were completely valid reactions to a great collection. “It’s so good to see real clothes,” purred my benchmate as this collection closed. And it was.
