Paul Smith on working with model Malgosia Bela

When I cast people for my advertising campaigns, I always want them to look at ease in the clothes they are wearing – do they look comfortable, confident and believable? Of course, it's about the look, but for me the key thing is personality. Does this person have a personality that looks appropriate for the clothes I design?

That was what I felt when Malgosia Bela tried on outfits from my new spring/summer collection. She looks great, of course, but she is such a character too. She was a very successful model in her 20s, in the 1990s, and since then she's become an actor, a mother and now has a new career in journalism, as editor-at-large for the new Polish edition of Vogue. So, she's not a conventional choice perhaps, especially as most fashion brands are still pushing a very young image.

But the fact that Malgosia is 40 years old and has lived a bit is what appealed to me about her. She has personality in spades, and at a time when the fashion world can seem very buttoned-up and often quite forced, she comes as a breath of fresh air.

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On the shoot, there was a fun atmosphere, a load of props – plastic lobsters, toy bows and arrows, that sort of thing. I'm a very playful and optimistic person and I always try to reflect that in the advertising campaigns. Malgosia really entered into the spirit of the thing. She was very, very relaxed – maybe that's what happens once you get to a point in your life where you have nothing to prove: you just find you can enjoy yourself.

Talking to her I was struck by the fact that she seemed so comfortable. She explained that having grown up in communist Poland, where she studied classical music, she moved to the West and started to model at 21. Initially she found it strange and intimidating, but then started to have fun. But she says she's having the most fun now, and this strikes her as a paradox – that as she's getting on for being a conventional model, she's enjoying herself more.

She looks great in Paul Smith – she wears the dresses well, but also, crucially, really suits my tailored clothes for women. We talked about tailoring for women, and Malgosia agrees with me that you don't have to show flesh to be sexy as a woman. In her opinion, the less you show the sexier you are. I do like that idea – and actually I agree. I really think that tailoring, with its nuances of silhouette and drape, is not just something that can make men look good – it can work brilliantly on a woman as well, it just has to be cut properly. In fact, when I first saw an Yves Saint Laurent smoking suit I thought it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. My wife Pauline owns the last one he ever made, and when you hold it, it feels incredible, it has such weight. Such amazing drape.

A suit for a woman doesn't have to be for eveningwear though; a day suit is so versatile. Women, like men, can wear suits with trainers and a T-shirt to dress them down, as well with a smart blouse or shirt to dress them up. And a tailored jacket works well over a silk dress or with jeans too. And it's so practical – I often think that women might feel quite liberated by having some jacket pockets for once, to put things in. I wear a suit jacket pretty much every day as I carry so much stuff with me: pens, notebooks, keys and my phone.

In the end, though, beyond all practical and aesthetic concerns, I suppose what was great about working with Malgosia on these pictures was that she, like me, feels that fashion should be fun, and not taken too seriously.

paulsmith.com