“This is all live. I’m scared stiff!” So said Paul Smith as he presented his mainline collection at Pitti Uomo for the first time in 31 years this afternoon. We were in the golden renaissance-revival splendor of Villa Favard, part of the Polimoda fashion school.
Smith presented the collection in a semi-trunk show, semi-lecture format. A small group of models came in and out as Smith ran us through the 16 looks they were wearing. Despite his protestations Smith delivered a smooth and almost professorially accomplished commentary.
He casually dropped some definitive asides on intarsia knits and wool fresco (“it’s quite an interesting yarn”) while holding forth on a collection he reported was loosely based on his formative experiences in the fleshpots of 1960s Soho in London. Prominently lapelled shirts and petite kipper ties were printed with a jumble of Florentine icons peppered with nods to Soho, while Smith’s podium was a jumble of artists’ easels. The period he was referencing was famous for the louche shenanigans of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and other brush-wielding habitués of Muriel Belcher’s bohemian dive bar, the Colony Room.
White-painted shoes and a great linen smock shirt revived from a 1979 Smith collection illustrated this, as did Smith’s Freudian styling of tailored jacket over carpenter’s pants (part of a handsome collaboration with Lee). There was a grip bag designed to be soft and flexible enough to carry your portfol.
