Flashback

Paul Smith remembers his Hillman Imp, 1966

THIS IS IN THE DRIVE of my mum and dad’s house in Nottingham, where I grew up. I think it’s 1966, so I’m 19 or 20. I was still living at home, and I had my very modern car, a Hillman Imp, which I’d bought second-hand. I can tell you exactly what I’m wearing. Those are 501 Levi’s, which were hard to find in the UK, especially out of London. The shirt is a Ben Sherman button-down, but the pièce de résistance is the Anello & Davide boots. They made the famous Beatles boots – that’s what these are; very soft leather, centre seam, Cuban heel. I was the absolute bee’s knees in those.

At that time I was working in a boutique in Nottingham. I’d left school at 15 and got a job as a gofer in a warehouse. I was also a racing cyclist – that was my passion – but when I was 17 I was involved in a crash and in hospital for almost six months: broken femur, collarbone, kneecap, a few ribs…

When I came out of hospital I started going to a pub called the Bell Inn, where all the art students used to go. They were into architecture, graphic design, fashion, and I thought, this sounds a pretty cool world. Then I got this job working as a shop assistant for a friend, whose father had set her up in a boutique called the Birdcage.

The Birdcage was a women’s clothes shop, but we opened the upper floor and started selling men’s clothes. I’d go down to London in the Hillman to buy stock, mostly in the East End, where you’d find somebody selling shirts and somebody else trousers, and you just built up a little supply chain that way. One of the big hits we had was when I discovered Ben Sherman shirts. At that point it was still owned by a man called Ben Sugarman. His factory was in Brighton, and I’d drive down to buy as many shirts as I could. They were really popular; it was that very mod look. We were pioneers in selling them outside London.

In those days, the average man really didn’t think about fashion; it was just clothes. So wearing Bass Weejuns shoes or a Ben Sherman shirt was a way of people expressing themselves, of saying, ‘I’m cool,’ because those things were hard to find. Today it’s gone completely the other way: there’s an oversupply of clothes and brands.

A year after this picture was taken I met Pauline, who became my girlfriend and then my wife. She’d studied at the Royal College of Art, and was teaching fashion at the Nottingham College of Art. In 1970 we opened a little shop – it was 12ft square – with very little money, two days a week. To begin with, Pauline made some of the clothes, then I learnt from her how to make them myself. The shop was originally called Vêtements Pour Hommes. Sorry about that! We changed it pretty quickly. The only reason for changing it to Paul Smith was that a lot of people knew me from the Birdcage.

That shop became like an oasis. People used to travel from Leicester, Sheffield, Manchester – even Glasgow. We opened our first shop in London in 1979 and didn’t look back. Now we employ 1,800 people, sell in 73 countries, and we’re an independent company. I’m still part of the design team, and in this world that’s gone a bit bonkers, that’s rather nice. — Interview by Mick Brown paulsmith.com

I’d drive down to Brighton to buy as many Ben Sherman shirts as I could

Paul Smith with his second-hand Hillman