Paul Smith | Paul Smith AW25: From Paris to Tokyo

We found all these wonderful photographs of my father's, and so we thought we would use that as inspiration for the collection. We actually managed to put it into knitwear, which is actually Jacquarded into knitwear. Jacquard is where it's actually knitted in. But the initial starting off point was dad's photos. These are transparencies, and my dad used to always write what they were, you know, going to the beach or barbecue or something like that. And so we've taken some of his handwriting and used it on fabric. Paris—very personal, stand up, talk to the people. It was, pretty to be honest, it's quite nerve-wracking for me to do it by standing up and talking to people and describing the fabric and where the idea comes from is quite unique.

I think this is the courtyard. I know it's a bit obvious, but we've got a lovely photo booth where you can sit in and take your pictures here and they come out there. I tried it earlier and I look gorgeous. This is the first room that people will come into. We call it Bar Paul, set up especially just for today. We've tried to make it, you know, feel authentic with writing on the window with the prices, a little bit of an art wall, and then what we're going to do now is go where the visitors will go, which is upstairs. Ah, this makes me quite emotional. These are all my dad's pictures that we put on display here for this presentation today in Paris. Hidden away there is my father's 1958 Rolleiflex. And this is my original Kodak Instamatic camera that I got when I was 11 and it really helped me look and see. The main photograph of the collection was this photograph that was taken in the garden by my father, which we then have used onto shirts, onto ties, as linings, and then we've printed it in a very unusual way in what they call an E-CAT weaving and it makes it look very sort of abstract as well. So using one image but in lots of different ways, quite interesting and quite special. Join me on the floor.

We have Nazar and Amy from the team. Put your hand up. Perfect. They're going to be working with the VIP specifically to get those pictures in the bar pool area.