Metrosexual, before it was fashionable
The newest Melrose Heights shopping landmark is a rubbernecker’s delight -- a shoebox-shaped building in a shocking shade of Angelyne pink. Then you learn it belongs to Paul Smith or, more accurately, Sir Paul Smith, and it all makes sense.
Smith, one of the few fashion designers to be knighted by the queen of England, took the starch out of modern menswear in the 1980s by fancifully subverting the conventions of Savile Row. His rainbow-striped Oxford shirts and pink pinstripe jackets with contrasting buttonholes are still much imitated by Ted Baker, Richard James and even Tommy Hilfiger. But back then, before the term “metrosexual” existed, Smith’s styles were a revolution, albeit one that grew out of a grand tradition of British dandyism.
“I was responsible in the early 1980s for nudging the British male to wear a pink shirt,” explains Smith, who is in L.A. for the opening. “Over the years, guys have realized it’s OK to be more self-indulgent with how they look.” Take moisturizer, for example. “When people ask me about moisturizer, I say, ‘I travel on planes, my skin gets dry, so I wear moisturizer. It’s not a big deal.’ ”
Smith, 59, is a ball of enthusiasm, the kind of character who puts you at ease, a nice guy in an industry not known for nice guys. From the look of it, he’s as excited about this store as any he’s opened. “I love how the color reflects off the cars passing by,” he says, watching a bus roll by bathed in a rosy glow. He designed the pink behemoth from the ground up, inspired by the work of Mexican architect Luis Barragan.
Inside, the store feels more like a curiosity shop than a retail space. “I imagined it like a studio set,” Smith says, describing how each collection is displayed in its own mise-en-scene. This is only his second store in the U.S., and it is the first to offer his women’s collection alongside menswear and accessories.
Women’s clothing is relatively new for Smith. It is arranged in a room taken part and parcel from an 18th century French chateau in Avignon. Men’s suits are in a room taken from a 19th century Paris apartment. And the wood-beamed ceiling resembles the interior of a soundstage.
Every nook and cranny is filled with ephemera -- antique cameras, 1940s children’s toys, a teapot made by an artist friend in Paris and books by one of Smith’s favorite authors, Heath Robinson.
“He does these fanciful drawings of inventions,” Smith says. “They are really bonkers, really mad, absolutely lovely. He does this drying machine with pulleys and weights. I think he has the same mad mind as me.”
Clearly, Smith enjoys playing curator. And everything in the store is for sale, including $150 dopp kits with photo prints of Mini Coopers, $1,500 shawls trimmed in ostrich feathers and $35 men’s socks. Customers have even started requesting the furniture, decorated with the swirling multicolored stripes that have become Smith’s logo.
“When I first started I had no money, and the only fabrics I could get were stock fabrics,” he says, explaining how the logo came to be. “They would either be white or Bengal stripe, in navy and white or red and white. The fabrics were so simple that I had to do something to them, so I made a little colored buttonhole, or put a different color under the cuff.”
By the 1980s he was in position to design his own fabrics. “So I set about creating the definitive stripe. I didn’t do it on a computer but on a piece of card that I wrapped yarn around to form the stripes .... It sold immediately and has never stopped.” Now the stripes adorn handkerchiefs, handbags, wallets, wristwatches, teacups, journals and cufflinks.
Smith entered the fashion business without any training. He grew up in Nottingham, intended to become a racing cyclist but was derailed by an accident at age 17. After getting to know some students studying at the local art college, he decided to try the clothing business, and by 1970 had his own boutique. With the help of his girlfriend, now his wife, Pauline Denyer, he showed his first men’s collection in Paris in 1976.
Today there are 12 collections under the Paul Smith name, including men’s, women’s, accessories and fragrance. The company is privately held, and the label is sold in 35 countries. There are more than 200 Paul Smith shops worldwide, including in London, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, New York and soon in Tokyo.
Smith is a hoarder, and his stores have become outlets for his treasures, which Denyer insists on confining to one room in their London house. It’s about the thrill of the hunt for that one-of-a-kind thing, he says.
Smith doesn’t watch TV or use the Internet, but he is passionate about traveling, so much so that 10 years ago, when he found his business responsibilities were pinning him down, he devised a solution: day trips to places as far-flung as India, Japan and China.
“I arrive at midnight and leave at midnight,” he says. “I have a car waiting, a hotel and a big pile of cash -- which sounds flash, but in India it’s literally a big pile of cash -- then I get very organized about what I want to do.”
He recently traveled to Jaipur. “I literally went to the Taj Mahal just to look at it at sunset,” he says. “You learn so much by traveling. In Rajasthan the way people dress, I love the color. A woman will wear a green top, a purple skirt and a yellow sash. That could become a man’s shirt and trousers for a fashion show.
“And the workmen in Japan, they wear these trousers that come out to here and get narrow down here with these clips on the sides,” he says, standing up and making the shape of a pair of jodhpurs with his hands. “You can take the clips and use them on a cuff or something.”
Pulling a men’s maroon cashmere sweater from a shelf in the store, he points to the embroidery. “This came from a blanket I got in Jaipur.”
The current women’s collection was inspired by Smith’s dream of a girl in her attic, trying on her mom’s 1960s wardrobe. There are paisley velvet robes, embroidered caftans and even some actual vintage pieces mixed in, including a tasseled Rudi Gernreich jacket with a tag that reads “Handpicked by Paul Smith.”
Smith visited L.A. a lot in the 1970s, which he calls “his era.” He hung out in Laurel Canyon with friends such as Aynsley Dunbar, the rock drummer who played with Frank Zappa among others, Carole King and Carly Simon. “When I was growing up, it was all about the West Coast sound,” he says. “The Grateful Dead, the Eagles, I had a romantic liaison with L.A.”
It’s not difficult to see how Smith fit into the ‘70s scene. He has a vast collection of old concert posters, some from the Fillmore in San Francisco, and he has even persuaded pal David Bowie to let him use his likeness on a coffee table, which sells for $1,500 in the Melrose shop.
Smith has plenty of celebrity fans, including Bowie and Mick Jagger, the members of Franz Ferdinand, Daniel Day-Lewis and Madonna. But the store opening party on Thursday was not the typical red carpet rollout with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Instead, the crowd was Melrose Avenue neighbors, music industry producers, film editors and graphic designers. And instead of vodka cocktails, there were Champagne and British mineral water. VIP area? Not for him. Smith was his usual gregarious self, working the room, greeting everyone in the crowd.
He clearly knows that part of the appeal of his line is the personality behind it. “People realize that everything in the stores has been chosen by one pair of eyes,” Smith says.
And what a mad eye it is.
