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May 20, 2002/ FWD/ -- Paul Smith has just finished answering the questions about the clothes,
but it's only now that he starts beaming.
"I've always got a camera in my pocket!" he says, pulling a little silver camera out of his
suit pocket, proving he's not all talk.
Recently, that camera, Smith attached, has traveled to Lithuania and Vietnam, Egypt and
Japan, Moscow and St. Petersburg. His latest jaunt was to Delhi - for the day.
None of this travel is for the purpose of pummeling fashion editors and buyers over the head
with the Next Big Travel Inspiration for fashion.
Rather, the 55-year-old designer hops from continent to continent "just to go there."
Smith, during this interview, was in New York on business purposes - promoting his new book
called "You Can Find Inspiration in Everything."
It's a collection of words -- like an essay by The Guardian's sports writer Richard Williams
about a serious childhood cycling accident of Smith's, an interview of Smith by a brain
scientist/professor, and plenty of the designer's own musings -- and images, including old
family pictures and numerous photos and illustrations of cars, road signs, and just about
anything else that has floated into Smith's line of sight over the years.
And it's refreshingly devoid of fashion-world platitudes.
"Inspiration" also includes novelties such as "Run, Rabbit, Run!" The pullout "Paul Smith
Board Game" contains this telling objective: "Paul Smith is a rabbit born in 1946. He may
live to be 99, but he'll have to eat a lot of carrots, avoid the fox's corporate lair and
open a few shops along the way. Learn about Paul Smith's adventures in the fashion
field and see if you can live to be 99."
The book's kickoff party, at Bergdorf Goodman, was a biggie in the industry. Certain fashion
publications seriously, breathlessly lauded its fashion significance, using lots of ink to
highlight the boldface names in attendance. But ... sorry guys ...
"It's not about the fashion industry," Smith says of the book. "It's just about quirky
observations. Things that interest me."
Things that show him as more than just a fashion guy (albeit a knighted one).
Smith has indeed proven a natural for moving into other lifestyle areas, like home décor.
He designed a line of furniture called "Mondo" for Cappellini, which showed at the most
recent Milan Furniture Fair.
True to Smith form, the line is unique in its playful visual intricacy: on the front panels
of drawers are silk-screen prints of furniture; a chair has a print of another chair on its
backside, or a print of objects such as a book, keys, spaghetti and lobster.
"Mr. Cappellini said, 'You've got a curious mind,'" Smith says.
(Note to reader: This is a major compliment -- Mr. Cappellini's got a curious mind too.)
This comes at a time when other big designers like Armani have made a heavily-publicized
effort to swim into the beige-and-gray home-décor sea with the likes of Donna, Ralph and
Calvin.
For companies like those, Smith says, branching into the home décor biz is all about
expanding their business plan.
"And for lots of them," he says, "the end product is so bland and doesn't mean anything.
They have nothing to say."
"None of them has come through a business decision to expand into home," he notes of his
own furniture ventures, reiterating the creative separatist attitude that has built his
reputation.
Smith has historically set himself up as diametrically opposed to the big fashion
conglomerates, which especially now seem to be getting bigger.
"There's been this corporate-acquisition disease" - Smith says - "corporations eating
smaller people, smaller companies thinking that is the best route to go. I went through a
lot of that myself - we were being head-hunted by 10 major corporations, and I was not
interested at all."
And though he did momentarily dip his toe in the acquisitions pool two years ago and put
his company on the block, Smith insists that selling out was never his intention. The designer
says he did it because his staff wanted him to make the good-faith effort to go through the
motions of shopping the company (the economy was sky-high at the time).
"So I met with these people just to go through the process," he says. After the meetings,
of which his employees were apprised, he claims his staff made the decision to say no to
any merger, because of the interested corporations' "formulaic way of working."
That formulaic workstyle, Smith believes, translates into corporatized banalities like
a repetitive look in some of the big designers' stores.
"Most of the big-brand shops look exactly the same in every city," Smith says, "which is
sad, because the whole joy of travel is to discover all different types of shops."
Part of Smith's recent trip to New York was to discover a shop -- rather, a shop location --
for the women's store he plans to open downtown, likely in Soho, sometime next spring.
A women's store opening would be significant; his women's sales have not been as strong in
the U.S. as men's, but he's quick to point out women's clothes sales are "52% up on last
year" in the U.S.
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Still, this number rests within a financial framework that, he admits, is much smaller in
the U.S. than the one he's created in England, or even Japan.
"In the U.S. I have a tiny business," he says, adding, "Maybe, in a way, I'm too quirky.
My whole approach is too quirky; my honesty too honest."
"But," Smith continues, "it's never been a company that has been about money -- it's about
having a nice day and making clothes, provoking ideas, putting question marks over people's
heads."
That said: Smith doesn't work for jellybeans. Annual worldwide sales for the past year hit
$350 million.
What's so different about Smith is that he exhibits a nonpareil calm, considering the
fashion world's frenetic dealmaking nature. That repose shows not only in his statements,
but also in his ease in uttering them. 52% above, 52% below - the digits become
insignificant as he sips his tea, here in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel.
Not only is Smith calm about his place in the fashion world, but he's downright ambivalent
about some aspects of it. The kinds of things that many designers build their image around,
like fashion shows, fall far short of impressing Smith.
"If I never had to do one [a fashion show] again, it would be fine with me," Smith says.
"The day after is really good."
"A lot of designers' lives revolve around the show," he continues. "It's theater and fame
and ego. Not that I don't enjoy them -- we've had nice shows and I enjoy them ... but it's
just part of the process."
And if one gets anything from Paul Smith, it's this: He's in charge of that process. "They
key thing about Paul Smith is that it's a privately-owned company," he says, "and it hasn't
got greedy shareholders hovering in the background."
In other words: it's the perfect situation for a curious mind.
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