Fatherly influence at fashion tutorial

A fashion tutorial for barely 80 people at Paul Smith; a charming break in a dank Wednesday, and a collection inspired by the designer’s dad.
 
Specifically, Harold B. Smith’s photographic images which enlivened hipster gents’ shirts and cool knits, and imparted a certain Anglo insouciance.

Guests entered the presentation in the Marais via a dark room, containing his dad’s actual enlarger, photos and a copy of an invite to Harold’s show in his photography group, Beeston Camera Club.
 
Sir Paul’s first runway show was back in October, 1976, in a friend’s apartment on Rue de Vaugirard with pals as models, and just 35 people in the audience. Today, he held his show inside a seven-story mansion he owns in the Marais.

“So luckily, I’ve grown a bit. Fast forward today, and I am still an independent company, and I can do what I am doing now, which is talk directly to you, about what I do for a living,” said Paul, occasionally brandishing his dad’s Rolleiflex camera. From that small first show, Smith now owns a company posting sales in excess of £200 million annually.
 
This season, he invited in trios of models to better explain this Fall 2025 collection. Pointing to his father’s shot of a flower, which his team had scaled up, made out of focus, or reduced radically on some great turquoise and russet cotton shirts. While suede and denim jackets were embroidered in doodles like those sketches his father would draw.

“This is dad’s photo, so wherever you are, thanks!” said Smith, pointing to a shirt, before clasping his hands in the air in thanks.
 
In a greater sense, the clothes were also homages to photography legends like David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Saul Leiter. One look from the early 80s was culled from Smith’s company archive, a Derbyshire leather jacket, “which was exactly the same style as Bailey wore,” stressed Sir Paul.
 
He also showed matching ties and shirts referencing the look of British photographers who still did military service in those days. While the color palette played on Leiter’s favorite hues – shadowy muddy urban colors with dashes of headlight-lit brights.
 
His other big news was a collab with Barbour, the venerable British outerwear label, injecting humor with images of springtime birds on the lining. All earning a long applause, before Smith took his joint photo with the cast, clearly please that his dad’s photography had had its moment in Paris.
 
They say that prolonged working in a dark room can shortened one’s life expectancy. It did not have much effect on Harold Smith. He had a long innings, passing at the age of 94, in 1998.