(no subject)
Last night was pretty amazing.
I had a circular email saying that the Contemporary were giving away sets of tickets for a Paul Smith lecture and couldn’t remember it being advertised. I’m not sure of the set up but I think it was a semi-corporate event to attract sponsors with some public availability so I joined the reserve list and on the day there was an email saying that demand was so great that they were showing the lecture in the bar on screen simultaneously.
I found this funny and thought that I’d go down and see if the weather that put people off and left some spaces and if not get some dinner while watching a live broadcast from FIFTY FEET AWAY (I’m not really mocking, I was into the hyper-reality of it).
Anyway, the telecast wasn’t necessary as me and about twelve others were allowed in as they had spare places.
All I knew about Paul Smith:
- Anton likes him
- He makes clothes
- He’s from Nottingham
- Theresa had a nice retail experience in his shop
The talk was really entertaining, exciting and inspiring. He came across as a genuinely nice guy who was really committed to making pockets of special things and as a lecture on business practice it wasn’t a million miles from some of the heavyweights in the film DIY or Die.
He said that he’d once been to see Edward De Bono (My thought process-Wow! That’s exciting, Paul Smith went to see Edward De Bono and THIS is exciting because I get to see paul Smith speaking). De Bono had said that you don’t change the job, the job changes you and he set out to make sure that his job didn’t change him.
After working in a shop he opened his own and spent Monday to Thursday making money with design jobs where he learned all about business and commerce and kept two days (Friday and Saturday) pure to make the shop how he’d wanted without the need for it to make money (the job changing him). The business model of things that make money and things to keep pure was reiterated throughout and he talked about keeping expenses down, that the company had grown within it’s means, never borrowing money but keeping some in the bank and expanding carefully and really emphasised that you needed an aspect of business that had personality and individuality that could be protected and kept pure from needing to be commercially driven or driven by external pressures. Even the concept of catwalk clothing developed this idea for him, a red suit for the catwalk where he would sell five more red ones plus 50 of the same suit in black.
The other side of the lecture was about finding inspiration and individuality and personality. He showed us countless slides of buildings, people, clothing from other cultures; all kinds of images and then showed how elements of those images from a pallete from a stripe scheme to a photo of a backpack from Daphne’s Handback that appeared almost full size on the back of a shirt with smaller backpack prints as well. He showed us a photo of a fabric pattern book from the 19th century (he has a room FULL of books, so much so that I almost gave him the two 110 year old Robin Hood books I had in my bag just for being inspirational). It was amazing as he showed us how these elements were pulled from anywhere and fearlessly used to produce beautiful things.
In terms of shops he showed us some photos of street traders with suitcases on their heads or cardboard boxes saying ‘That’s his shop’ and explained how he hated cloned rolled out chains and how every Paul Smith shop was very individual from this one in LA
That has what looks like a Hollywood film-set inside, which is really wood panelling from a chateau that had been shipped in, to a small dilapidated shop in Paris that he was so into that when he bought it, he didn’t even put his name on the front and it only sells a few things to people who know that it’s there.
He showed us an airport shop with imported wooden and stone flooring, saying that he hated airport shops and insisted that his would be different.
The talk took up most of the time and during the short Q&A he gave away scarves to people who asked questions. I didn’t get picked and wanted to ask him about fearlessness but on reflection, he’d kind of told us about that in saying that he always took care of the money in order to take the risks.
He was really funny and personable and has a great Nottingham accent which reminds you all the time that he’s from the City.
I asked him to sign something foolish for me while he was having photos taken with fans and he was happy to oblige saying ‘you might want to let that dry for a minute’. I politely said ‘Thank you, that was really exciting’ as he got back to the photos, expecting him to have finished with me but wanting still to say it and he broke away again for a second and said ‘ah, thank you’.
It was a really inspiring hour of seeing someone who had become really successful against the grain of modern commerce (there must have been moments when he was so hot that borrowing a ton of cash to create a rash of shops to pull in the bacon would have been advisable to not let that buzz go to waste but the consequence of his business model is that he hasn’t had to watch those shops close as the economic tide goes out. It also goes a long way for me that he was also a genuinely nice guy, almost validation that all of the cynicism of commerce isn’t as necessary as it’s often painted.
So successful that when you put the word ‘Paul’ into google*, it autofills to ‘Smith’
It didn’t hurt that the last image he showed was a photo of him with Patti Smith.
* Once again, it makes me laugh that Microsoft word does not recognise the word ‘Google’ ‘what’s that mate - never heard of it? Is it a wobbly eye used in craft?’ but DOES recognise the double-word combo of Robin Hood and corrects the capitols when you right click on it.