You've never heard tracky bottoms.
And what are they? I've never heard of them.
Scaffolder pants. Do you think he's stylish? He thinks he's stylish, doesn't he?
I don't think he's stylish. No.
People just must have assumed your entire career that that's your handwriting.
Paul, what an absolute pleasure to meet you. Thank you very much indeed for coming in. We're talking quite early in the morning, but I don't think that bothers you. You are a morning person, aren't you? You are a lark.
I love early mornings, especially because we live in London. I swim at 5:00 most mornings. I love it. I get to work at 6ish and the cleaners are in and then first appointment's about 7:30. But all of that is wonderful. I love it because you have time to think and be yourself and also you can actually drive through London at that time of the morning.
That is very true. And presumably you get to swim in quite an empty place as well which
I swim in the Royal Automobile Club which is closed sadly at the moment for refurbishment. So we've missed it. But I also go to the Landstone Club, which I've been a member of for years. And there's normally about four of us. And we are called guess what? The early morning swimmers.
Something a bit more imaginative.
We're allowed now. We didn't used to be allowed. We used to sneak in probably illegally, but not illegally, but you know what I mean. We had to switch the lights on.
Yeah, this is a lovely vision, Paul. Lovely vision. Were you always up with the larks when you were a child and when you were a teenager? Tell us a bit about home life because you are the youngest child by a country mile in your family.
That's right. As I think you know it was a gift from God mistake in brackets and yes. So, I was like an only child really. And I honestly can't really remember much about my childhood until I got to the age of 11. And that was because there were two punctuation marks at 11. One was a racing bicycle which was bought for me by my dad and then also a camera, a Kodak Retina film camera. My father was an amateur photographer and also the founder member of the local camera club just outside of Nottingham which still exists, the Beeston camera club. And the wonderful thing about both those things was one is the gentleman we bought the bicycle from was a member of the local cycle club and said why don't you come out with the club on a Sunday and you're very welcome. And I started doing that at 12 and looked around and there was no parents and it was just sort of very lovely and special and of course lived in Nottingham so we used to go to Derbyshire and all the rolling hills and the treat of the CTC cafe that you would find now and again the cycle touring club of beans on toast.
And it did give you dreams and ambitions of being a professional racing cyclist, didn't it? But your parents weren't completely keen on that.
No. No. At the age of 15, I was not very bright at school and my love was cycling and I left. My father said do you want to go on to like a technical college or something like that and I said I want to be a professional cyclist and he said sadly that's not a real job which at the time he was absolutely correct because there were no professional teams in Great Britain at all mostly in Belgium and France.
But also you went on to have a terrible cycling accident, didn't you?
Yes. At the age of 17. Yeah. But started to work at 15, which was fantastic actually because I worked for a very old-fashioned company that switched the lights off when there was nobody in the room and used the back of invoices for note paper and undid the string of a parcel. And so when I eventually got my own little business age 21 that things like that stuck in my mind and seemed terribly old-fashioned at the time but were really useful. And yes at 17 I had a bad crash, three months in hospital and when I came out luckily two of the other patients were released at that time same time and one of them said oh let's keep in touch. We all got we always used to get on each other shouting to each other across the ward morning how are you and one of them luckily chose to meet up in a pub called the Bell Inn in Nottingham and that's where all the arts students went and so suddenly this whole language that I'd never ever witnessed before like you I remember talking to a young man who turned out to be a fine artist called I love the work of Wassily Kandinsky And of course I had no idea even how to say the words Kandinsky and or the Bauhaus which of course is the famous German design school and I thought that the Bauhaus was probably a council house estate near Nottingham or something. So there was this amazing sort of world opening up to me. I thought I wonder if you can earn a living actually doing something which is creative.
I mean so Paul the answer is yes. You absolutely can.
Well, so far so good. 53, 56 years in.
Before we talk about retail and design, I was really interested in your childhood. I mean, it shapes our entire lives, doesn't it? And your dad had this flare, didn't he, for designing bits and pieces. He was a proper Heath Robinson. He feels to me in the book like a very entrepreneurial spirit.
Did he have a sense that you went the distance that he couldn't go? That often happens, doesn't it?
Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think that's correct. What I do think is correct is he was entrepreneurial in a way which wasn't financial. He was, I don't think he ever employed anybody to do any work on the car or the house. Not because he was mean or didn't have the money, but just because he could do it, you know. So, he would paint the house or repair the car or and I think in the book it mentions he at 92 I noticed a piece of metal on the wall and I said, 'Oh, what's that, Dad?' And he said, 'Oh, don't look at that.' He said, 'I made a shoe horn because I couldn't get my shoes on at 92.' You know, which is lovely.
But this is such an inherited trait for you, isn't it? because you clean out the fridge at work. You know, you are there emptying the bins when they need emptying. You're the problem solver in all of your businesses in a tiny practical way as well as
Very much influenced by my first job and my father. Yeah. And my quite good success in Japan which started in the 80s. I really cite that on my communication skill which came from my dad and because in 82 in Japan the company I was working with one person spoke school boy English and that was it. So it was very much about gesture and humor and somehow working out the situation where you could communicate with somebody in a very visual way rather than using the language. And I definitely think that was to do with my father. You know, on a Sunday, you know, you get the family come round and it was in the front room of the house and you know, I'd be very little lad and then you cousins and aunties and then you would be really shy and then in about four or five minutes, my dad had made everybody relax.
And you say that you feel that your mom didn't have a huge influence on you, but what she created around you was warmth and calm.
And she had a beautiful voice.
And you also say that you have inherited from her something that you might consider to be a weakness which is a desire to avoid confrontation. But actually that can be a massive strength, can't it?
Yes. I mean, I think I'm not a confrontational person at all and the clothes are definitely not confrontational because, you know, I was sort of weaned on in my 20s of, you know, really amazing designers around the world. Jean Paul Gaultier from France and Vivienne Westwood and they did very extreme clothing and I call those confrontational clothes you know where look at me attention seeking clothes and I never wanted that but I always realized that also I needed to have a point of view otherwise I wouldn't sell the clothes and that's how the little expression came classic with a twist you know so you just look under a cuff and it being a this shirt I've got on is blue, but inside the cuff is brown, you know. So, just tiny little things.
Let's talk about the clothes. One person who it's hard to imagine your life without is your wife, Pauline. She brought something out in you, didn't she, after you had met. Tell us a bit about her. And the life that you moved into after you had met her.
Well, I met her and she already had two children and she lived in London. She looked amazing because she made all her own clothes and the cut and shape and the quality and she had studied at the Royal College of Art as quite a young student at a very interesting time that sort of crossed over with the Hockney, Peter Blake era. Not exactly at the same time but either side of her and the interesting thing they studied couture clothes which was which anybody who doesn't know that what that is is it's really understanding about how things are made the understanding of shape cut balance proportion quality and so Pauline's standard from the beginning was always that and there were lots of lovely creative designers in London, similar age to me, and they were far more creative. But sadly, the clothes were normally quite badly made, and if they sold to a little shop in London or Paris or New York, often they would come back and the company would close down quite quickly.
So, you always wanted to aim high and for something stylish and smart. Take us to Paul Smith's Vêtements pour Homme. Forgive my accent.
It was rather pretentious name, wasn't it? I was trying to be different because I had been working in a shop very near to the little room that I opened because it was a room without windows and down an alleyway. And so I thought, well, you need to do something that will attract attention and so we had this sign that said Vêtements pour Homme from Paul Smith. In different graphics to what we use now actually, but very modern. And it was just a way a lot of people knew me as Paul and Paul Smith. And so I just sort of wanted to let people know I existed and I got this little job.
Yeah. What you were doing though was very bold and it was very brave and you were taking a risk weren't you?
Yeah, huge risk because Pauline was the actual person earning the money because her wages we survived on her wages as a teacher at the art school in Nottingham having moved from London to be with me in Nottingham. And so I realized that this little shop that we opened wouldn't provide an income for us to live on. And so thanks to Edward de Bono, the lateral thinker, who Pauline and I were big fans of. He said many interesting things, but one of the things he said was the job always changes you and you never change the job. And so we were thinking, well, how did that apply to us? And then we realized this little shop full of clothes that were quite specific and probably a little bit too advanced for a shop in a provincial town city we wouldn't be able to survive on. So I work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday earning money doing styling, photography because I could take photographs because of my
