50 years of Paul Smith

The designer celebrates his brand’s golden anniversary with trademark joy

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Paul Smith calls at 4pm on the dot. “Mr Smith here!” he enthuses. “Are you alive? I’m alive, luckily, in this mad world we live in.” This same mad year also marks Smith’s 50th in the fashion industry: half a century on from the opening of his first shop in Nottingham, Paul Smith Vetements Pour Homme at 6 Byard Lane, which measured just three square metres in size. It’s 44 years since he travelled to Paris to showcase his first menswear collection, which would become the start of a biannual trip he would continue thereafter to make. And 41 years since the opening of his first London flagship on Floral Street in Covent Garden. Today the brand is sold across five continents and in 70 different countries.

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