As we checked over his board during the preshow hubbub, Paul Smith told a story: “I think it was in ’81. Paul McCartney said to me that he wanted some clothes. So I went to the Hammersmith Odeon, where he was doing a sound check, and laid them all out— about 10 outfits—on the floor. He came offstage and came over, and I said: ‘I’ve laid them all out like they’re a collection, but the good thing is that when you take the outfits apart, they’re all just nice clothes.’ And he went: ‘That’s fantastic. I’ll take them! Do you want a cheese sandwich?’ And he made me a cheese sandwich.” Also, added Smith, “that was about a five-grand order.”
Smith wasn’t just boasting about his capacity for impromptu cheese sandwiches. We were discussing clothes you want to wear, pieces to repeat. Commercial might be considered a déclassé fashion quality in some quarters, but that’s a stupid approach to what, at the end of the day, is a business. Today this old master delivered a highly commercial collection of menswear whose very thoughtful flourishes of artistry were exactly what made it so appealingly distinct.
Details you wanted to exhibit on yourself included ’70s sneakers with crepe soles; back-belted jackets with inverted pleats running down the spine (a little old-school Neapolitan); liner gilets with solarized photo-print patterning; and coats in Huddersfield-spun gabardine. There was a conscious queasiness to a color palette that included a lurid lime and winey purple. Mixed with those occasional pattern accents (and a tight striped twinset), it knowingly recalled that cusp of the ’70s and ’80s high point of decorative decadence before the switch flicked to modernist chrome and hard surfaces.
The styling by Julian Ganio was typically deft, laying different garments’ complementary aspects against each other in tightly scripted wearable sentences. But you could also happily see yourself editing it too, by picking up specific pieces from the collection— favorites from this corner included the reversible piped shearling, the evening jacket in dark green with a large-bellied shawl collar, and the violet liner jacket with matching Japanese-style tool sling—and then wearing them out with great satisfaction alongside your existing wardrobe.
