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interview: paul smith - page 1 of 3PAUL SMITH
TALKING DESIGN
WITH 'TRUE BRIT'British clothing designer Paul Smith is probably the hardest-working man in fashion. He's also the biggest-selling European designer in Japan. Air caught up with "True Brit" during a recent visit here.
You've probably heard of Paul Smith. Maybe you saw a magazine ad of his or walked past one of his shops in Europe or Japan. Perhaps you've bought some of his clothes. But, be honest, you probably don't know what he looks like.
Few fashion designers reach rock-star status or, for that matter, enjoy the same kind of celebrity the supermodels who wear their clothes do. The designers' fame is in their name only, their brand, which often stands alone on a label without any image of the designer himself.
But that said, Paul Smith is big, and, as the saying goes, Big in Japan. He is the biggest-selling European designer in Japan. The handbags of Louis Vuitton and Prada may be everywhere in the hands of fashionable young Japanese women, but Paul Smith's smart, quirky clothes, bags, and accessories outsell all his European competition here. In 1997, his company did over a 170 million-pounds-worth of business worldwide, and Japan was a large chunk of that. (He has over 200 shops in Japan alone.)
When his True Brit exhibition showed in Japan in 1998 and this year, fans of this very British of designers lined up to get in. When he comes here to lecture on design, students line up to get his autograph. This is the stuff of rock stars. Pretty heady for a 50-something English chap who makes beautiful bespoke (tailored) suits.
Smith appears to take his popularity all in stride. He's a down-to-earth fella who cracks witty jokes and can be as self-deprecating about himself as he is confidant about his style. This may be due to Smith being, if you pardon the expression, cut from a different cloth than most of his peers. His entry into the fashion world was, literally, by accident.
Perhaps because of this, Smith offers a reality check on what the fashion world is about in contrast to that depicted in films like Robert Altman's "Pret-a-Porter" ("Ready to Wear"), where Paris fashion week is shown as a world filled with capricious cliques of snobby supermodels, ego-maniacal photographers, spiteful designers, kowtowing magazine editors, and pretentious hangers-on. This in a crazy business that is both creative and image-conscious to extreme. What the movie shows little of is the actual hard work, the nuts-and-bolts, of what the business is about: making and selling clothes.
Smith may inhabit this world, but as he points out in our interview, fashion is not only the face you see in the media, but rather a business. It's not just about "designing" clothes but about much, much more. It's hard work, long hours, and a consistent commitment to quality. It means never letting up, because, after all, this is fashion, and fashion changes quickly. There's no time for breaks. Nose to grindstone. Always.
Now at his peak, Smith is on a mission that goes beyond -- or perhaps hand-in-hand with -- his business. He wants to help the next generation of young designers understand the realities of the fashion industry. He wants to inspire them too. Whether it's design, music, art or media, the places from where one draws ideas are everywhere around us, according to Smith. We just have to look hard enough to find something fresh, original and genuine. True words from True Brit.
Air: Paul Smith is quite popular in Japan. You must come here often.
Paul Smith: Yes, this is the 46th trip. I came for the first time in 1982.
Air: There's that question Do clothes make the man or does the man make the clothes? Many people discount the importance of fashion. What do the clothes do for us?
PS: Well, I think that the clothes are a part of self-expression, and they can show your personality or your individuality - "I am serious," or "I am fun," or "I am cool," or "I am sexy." I mean, in the case of uniforms for the army or something, they say "I am tough." So they really do a job. In the case of airline pilots they make you look very believable and add confidence to the person getting on the plane. Can you imagine if the pilot was in beach shorts and a baseball cap? You wouldn't feel quite so comfortable, so the clothes really do a job, you know.
Air: That's a good point. But are well-designed clothes art, as some have suggested?
PS: They're not art - I don't think - in my opinion, but I think they're just part of self-expression.
Air: As a teenager were you interested in getting into the fashion or design business?
PS: My original ambition was never to be involved in fashion - I didn't have any ambition for fashion. I wanted to be a racing cyclist.
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Air: A racing cyclist?
PS: When I was 11, I got my first bike. And that's really what I wanted to be: a professional racing bicyclist. And so this happened (shows a copy of an X-ray of a broken femur). This is a picture of my broken femur. I hit a car on my bike, so that ended my hope of being a racing cyclist. I was 17 when it happened.
What was interesting about that was that when I came out of the hospital, I discovered an English pub which completely by chance happened to be the pub where all the art students went. So I met young graphic designers, artists, architects, fashion designers, and that's really what changed me in having an interest in fashion. I had always been creative without realizing it.
Air: But hadn't you been the arty type in school?
PS: In school the only thing I seemed to be good at, oddly enough, was woodwork, which is hand work. I wasn't very good at art. I was always good with my hands. I know that I wasn't really good at art because....Next Page
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