Who is Paul Smith?

What: Hello My Name is Paul Smith Where: Design Museum, SE1 When: 15th Nov - 9th Mar 2014 Price: £7.50 students, £11.85 adults (including donation)

The title of the Design Museum’s latest exhibition, ‘Hello My Name Is Paul Smith’, feels slightly redundant. Over the last 40-odd years, Paul Smith has become one of the most recognisable men in the British fashion industry, heading a brand of global renown, and producing a vast range of products, all emblazoned with his own signature. Surely he is a man who needs no introduction?

But the museum promises to give more than a cursory overview of the man and his designs. Instead it proclaims to ‘offer a unique insight into the magnificent mind of Paul Smith’. So does the exhibition manage to get under his skin, stripping away the tailoring and stripe patterns, giving us a peek at what makes the man tick?

Unfortunately not. Instead, all they manage to offer is a shallow glimpse at one of the most famous menswear brands on the planet, in a show that seems to add up to little more than shameless advertising.

Beginning with a mock-up of his first ‘shop’ – in reality a boxy, windowless room in Nottingham – the exhibition moves through various stages in both his life and his design process, until we end at the finished product. Born just outside Nottingham in 1946, Smith showed more interest in cycling than fashion for most of his youth, but underwent a change of heart as a teenager working in his father’s clothing warehouse. After taking classes in tailoring, and a brief stint in Savile Row, he set up his first shop in 1970, and showed his first collection in Paris in 1976. The exhibition features a recreation of this first ‘show’, in which Smith laid out his collection of around 10 pieces on the bed of his friend’s apartment, highlighting how hard Smith worked to set up his first shop in London in 1979. In a post-internet world, where designers are often plucked out by benefactors such as Lulu Kennedy before they have even finished their graduate collections, it’s interesting to see how designers used to get themselves noticed. In Smith’s case, it was his knack for combining traditional tailoring with a uniquely witty edge; boring jackets reveal florid linings, traditional shirts are spiced up with garish prints, in what I suppose would now be called – somewhat nauseatingly – ‘eccentrically British’. This, along with his charming personality helped spread his brand across the world, most notably in Japan, which now has over ten times the number of Paul Smith stores than the UK. Now approaching 70, and still active, it is difficult to see Smith as anything other than the grandmaster of British menswear.

However, while ‘Paul Smith’ itself is a personal brand, the exhibition does a very poor job in getting across any of Smith’s personality, instead presenting him as a sort of sterile amalgamation of influences, a faceless face behind the label, a Betty Crocker of the fashion world.

We explore a recreation of his office, which resembles a kooky antique store - coffee table books fight for space with toy robots and cycling paraphernalia, while papers fill up every available inch of desk space. While I am sure that this idiosyncratic range of interests has greatly contributed to Smith’s success, this magpie approach to design and retail has been co-opted by high street giants like Urban Outfitters or Topshop, making what might have once been a unique attribute seem like a cynical marketing ploy.

Similarly, the recreation of his HQ, where he and his team cook up their collections, seems like little more than an intern’s idea of what a ‘trendy, London design firm’ would look like: Apple computers gleam on white countertops cluttered with fabric samples and copies of Fantastic Man, while various fashion sketches are pinned up around the room. It is as far from a ‘unique insight’ into Smith’s design process as possible.

The only interesting tid-bit of information we are given is that they wind string around cardboard to create their iconic stripe patterns. But other than that, there is little to make Smith stand out from his contemporaries. While other designers, such as the late Alexander McQueen or the doyenne of Italian fashion Miuccia Prada, manage to make their collections seem like an exciting continuation of their personal vision, Smith seems somewhat removed from the entire process – a figurehead of a brand that has its own separate identity.

The exhibition culminates with a corridor of Paul Smith designs from a number of previous collections. It is worth pointing out that this is the first time we are exposed to any actual clothes from his collections, and the result is somewhat lacking.

A victim of his own success, Smith’s clothing, when presented as a solid block, appears quite dull and banal. His formula of British tailoring with a twist has served him well, but after nearly 40 years in the industry, it is beginning to wear somewhat thin; there are only so many times you can churn out a floral shirt, no matter how well designed. What was once exciting and new now seems almost staid. It is therefore something of a pity that Smith has come to represent the pinnacle of British menswear, when there are so many young, unique designers ready to take up his mantle. New talents such as Craig Green and Nasir Mazhar are producing extremely daring garments, adding a shot of danger and intrigue into the near-catatonic world of menswear, but are obscured by the long shadow cast by those like Paul Smith.

All in all, it would be churlish not to recognise the service that Paul Smith has done for the British fashion industry; by spreading his clothing all over the world, Smith has ensured that UK menswear continues to be relevant in today’s globalised fashion world. However, I felt let down by the exhibition. Rather than giving me an ‘insight’ into Paul Smith’s mind, it left me frustrated that none of my questions about the man and his working practice has been answered. The exhibition feels less like an exploration into one of the most famous men in fashion, and more like a cheap exercise in self-promotion – something of which Paul Smith has little need.