SIR PAUL SMITH, the man with a story

Say Paul Smith and say colour. And stripes. Oh and Sir Paul Smith, because in 2000 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Sir Paul Smith is a man you already knew was big and important, but only until you hear his story do you realise that he does something that’s really special. Well, I thought so anyway. I heard him speak last week at the conference What Design Can Do and I’m a big fan.

Now first a short history lesson. Paul was born in the middle on nowhere in England where they only had one clothing store. When he turned 11 he got a bike form his father and it was love at first sight. He biked everywhere, lived for cycling. A career as a professional cyclist was his absolute dream, he even left secondary school for it. But when he turned 17 he got into a serious car accident and had to stay in the hospital for three months. He saw his life as a professional athlete rush by. When he got to leave the hospital for the first time, he went for a beer at a pub and met a couple of art students. Their enthusiasm, passion, and love for artists like Piet Mondriaan, Andy Warhol, and photographer David Bailey works infectious and it was there and then that he decided he wanted to become a designer.

From village to Paris

That’s less easy than it sounds because he lived in a village in which fashion was a completely unknown phenomenon. He finally finds a store in which he gets to rent a couple of square metres in the back, out of sight from customers. Together with his girlfriend (now wife, “we’re together for over a hundred years and I still love her”) he sold handmade clothing. Of course Paul hadn’t the foggiest what he was doing, and his girlfriend Pauline had to teach him the craft. She was a student at the prestigious Royal College of Art and taught him everything, “I wouldn’t be here without my wife.” Those couple of square metres soon became too small and thanks to working hard and saving up, they were able to open their own little shop in 1970. And everything picked up from there because barely six years later he showed his first Paul Smith collection in Paris. Now, in 2014, there are 14 different collections sold in 66 countries. Japan alone has got 200 stores. 200!

“It’s my best piece of advice.”

A career like this isn’t easy. You need to work hard but also have a certain attitude towards life. “It’s all about balance, don’t worry about the rest. Someone has a bigger store than you? Doesn’t matter. Someone has a bigger car? Relax, it’s OK.” He found that balance early on by working really hard at a job he didn’t like from Monday to Thursday, only to be able to do what he loved from Friday to Sunday, which was making clothes. “It’s my best piece of advice.”

But there’s more. He came with a list of oneliners that the cynics among us (me) thought that it resembled cliché bullshit, but actually are dealing with important things. To start, it’s vital to look around. Look, really look, see something, notice things. He showed us photos of a church in Florence and then an abstract pattern on a shirt that’s in stores now and dammit, when you hold the picture of the church next to it you see the connection. “Looking and seeing.You can find inspiration in everything, there’s so much around us all the time. If you can’t see it, you’re not looking properly.”

Never assume

“Make room to break the rules.” Not tread the well trodden road. “You can’t do it without doing it,” you can think all you want that you want to do something, but without actually doing it nothing happens. “Do things which are right, not which are easy”, and, most importantly, “never assume.” Don’t assume things will be ‘alright.’ Make sure it does.

Someone in the audience asks him when he thinks he’ll retire, which makes him laugh a lot. Until he can’t walk, the answer is. And that will take a while because of all that biking, “I still got the legs of a teenager.” Another question is why he hasn’t got shareholders. The company is still private whilst it could easily go to the stock exchange. In fact, it would only get bigger, Paul agrees. But “size isn’t everything. What’s everything is having a lovely day.” Aint that the truth.