How to be an English eccentric
Anna Murphy has a masterclass from Sir Paul Smith
I have never heard more about English style than when I lived in Italy for a year as a student. Lo stile inglese was an obsession for many of the twentysomething men I knew at that time. I remember several weeks during which the culmination of the daily passeggiata was a shop window in which there was displayed a blazer — and a salmon pink one at that. This, apparently, was lo stile inglese. Eventually one of them bought it, for the then-unimaginable sum of €400.
Oh the irony, given that one of the reasons I was besotted with Italy at the time was its stylishness. I was desperate to leave behind everything from elasticated waists to bacon butties (the two, let’s face it, all too often joined at the well-padded hip).
My biggest learning from that long-ago sojourn was that sometimes you have to leave the place to which you feel you don’t quite belong to realise that, in truth, you do belong. And, more than that, that you can’t properly ascertain what is your tribe until you have the chance to hang out with a different one, and point your telescope back at where you were before.
I love English style now, along with many other aspects of our national identity. And I am pleased that it has so far survived the global ironing-out of national aesthetics: a flattening that has seen America plant its flag, Wild West-style, all over the world with jeans and sneakers.
English style is, of course, often associated with male clothing and the dandiness of historical figures such as Beau Brummell and the Duke of Windsor. But just one aspect of the genius of Sir Paul Smith – one of our best-loved fashion names at home and abroad – is that he has retooled it for women too.
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The designer is himself the personification of English style. Which means what to him? “Adding an element of the unexpected to classic design ideas,” he says. “That is what seems quintessentially English to me. That’s what I have been known for since the beginning of my career.”
Which is why a plain Paul Smith suit for man or woman might have an extravagantly patterned lining or a quirky button or buttonhole. Or why an otherwise straight-down-the-line trench might be subtly amped by way of an ombré stripe in beige-adjacent hues. I wore my spotty Paul Smith raincoat – one of my first designer purchases – until it fell apart.
At the heart of this approach is the understanding of a set of rules – and the confidence, if not the chutzpah, to bend them. The rules are represented by the “classic” part of the equation, a blazer cut just so, say; the bending comes in the form of unexpected detailing, colour or pattern. One of the boldest statements in our national fashion culture is perhaps those rococo waistcoats worn by members of Eton Pop, the group that sits at the top of the school’s student hierarchy. Like these, Paul Smith’s collections tend to make the mad abstracts not too obvious; hiding inside a jacket or coat, or displayed in the flash of a stripy sock or cufflinks that look like matchsticks.
The magic is in the quirkiness, the eccentricity. So, would Smith describe himself as an English eccentric? “I am definitely someone who finds joy in lots of different places,” he says. “I will leave you to decide if that makes me an eccentric.” This from the man who once pulled a plastic wasp out of the pocket of his suit jacket when we met.
And now there is another manifestation of Smith’s eccentricity in the form of the new Sir Paul Smith suite at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair, London. It’s in superlative, yet not entirely straightforward, good taste. There is not only a mishmash of eras, encompassing a Georgian walnut chest of drawers on the one hand and Stilnovo lighting on the other, but also a collection that runs the gamut from the unquestionably grand (a Mario Bellini leather desk chair) to the tongue in cheek (a framed yo-yo). It’s that plastic wasp all over again. And I love it.
