Sir Paul Smith: ‘If I scrapped working from home, I wouldn’t have any staff’

The fashion designer, 78, on his passion for clothes, how Labour’s Budget is hampering business and why he hates remote working

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“Nearly everything you see is a gift,” says Sir Paul Smith, somewhat apologetically, ushering me into his Covent Garden office. It is the most cluttered room in London, or possibly on planet Earth. Every surface is piled high with untold thousands of books, magazines, stuffed animals, action figures, toys, paintings, records, razor blades, sugar cubes, photographs, trinkets and nick-nacks.
Whatever his other accomplishments, Sir Paul is Britain’s most stylish kleptomaniac, and at 78, dressed in a beautiful dark blue suit and brown trainers, mane of grey hair intact, the designer has lost none of his Tiggerish joie-de-vivre. He has always been a canny salesman as well as a designer and the marketing starts with the messy office. For decades, the cave of wonders has served a number of useful purposes: it advertises its owner’s diverse interests, interesting friends and longevity in the gig, and it distracts nosy hacks from the task at hand.
At a certain point, Sir Paul explains, people started “sending him things”. They have not stopped. He has been in this office for 24 years, since when it has become more and more of a fire hazard, the kind of space to give clutter-haters a heart attack. “Word’s got out that he’s mad,” Sir Paul says. “He’s an absolute nutter. If you want to clear out your granddad’s garage, send it to Paul Smith, he’ll think it’s fabulous.”
There are bikes, of course, for the lifelong cycling fanatic; 22 of the things, piled up against one another in the corner. “That’s the bike Mark Cavendish won the world championships on,” he says. (“Cav” is a mate.) “And that’s the one Chris Froome won the Tour on.” A large novelty iPod was a present from Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s head designer. Ive is a friend. So was David Bowie. So is Alexa Chung. And so on. 
He picks up one frame in which there are two black and white photographs. The lower image shows Sir Paul, when he was a boy, sitting on a rug. Above it, the same image has been reproduced, except the rug has become a flying carpet, Sir Paul high in the sky above a familiar landmark.
“This is my crazy Dad,” he says, “who was an amateur photographer. I came home from school one day and he said ‘sit on this rug in the garden’. Two weeks later, I’m flying over Brighton Pavilion.”
One wonders what his father would make of his son’s vantage point today. Fifty-four years since Paul Smith was founded, today it turns over more than £200m a year and employs more than 1,000 people in 65 countries. Yet while sales are back to pre-pandemic levels, the company has posted a loss for the past four years. The invasion of Ukraine forced him to close his Russian businesses – albeit not immediately, which prompted criticism from some quarters – while inflation has put pressure on his costs.
The brand is still a byword for a certain kind of modish chic; an independent British brand that has retained its spirit even as its signature multicoloured stripes have reached around the world.
As well as a net worth that has been estimated at around £250m, its founder has every accolade worth collecting; companion of honour, knighthood, a tram in Nottingham named after him, collaborations with practically every great designer alive and some who are no longer with us. And he has achieved all of this without ever having an email address. He only grudgingly conceded to a mobile phone, he explains as we sit down at the long table where he does most of his work.
“It’s just that I love my job so much and I love getting on with it. If I got an email, I’d feel responsible for answering it. A few people know my phone number now. Before Covid, it was fewer than 20. I find that a really big responsibility. When I get messages, I have to answer them.”
This techno-ambivalence has led to a certain amount of mischief. “The other day we had a call from reception saying a ‘live pigeon, arrived for Paul’. This guy had sent me a carrier pigeon with his phone number on it. I rang the number and he said ‘oh it’s just a bit of fun because I know you don’t have an email.’”
Christmas is Paul Smith’s busiest time of year. He estimates the company does roughly 50 per cent of its annual business over the eight weeks beforehand. He slides across a memo which tells me that Paul Smith will sell 96,000 pairs of socks, 50,000 t-shirts, 24,000 pieces of knitwear.
On November 20, Sir Paul unveiled the Christmas tree he has designed for the lobby of Claridge’s, the latest in a list of illustrious designers the hotel has employed since 2009: Louis Vuitton, Sandra Choi for Jimmy Choo, Kim Jones for Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Dolce & Gabbana, John Galliano.
“It’s pretty amazing to get asked,” Sir Paul says, “because of the previous people who’ve done it. [Mine] is very much about a real Christmas tree. It’s not real, because you’re not allowed to have a real tree. But it’s not a pile of suitcases [like Louis Vuitton’s last year] or umbrellas [Burberry’s tree in 2015]. If someone asks me ‘What’s your feeling of Christmas?’, it’s a tree, with decorations and baubles and prezzies.”
He has decorated his tree with bird boxes, hundreds of the things, each individually decorated. He says the boxes remind him of the hotel. “They remind me of Claridge’s, seeing the people come and go,” he explains. “And when you walk in the park on Christmas Day, seeing everyone out for a walk with their families. He and his wife, Pauline, will have their Christmas lunch there this year.
“Claridge’s keeps a very, very high standard,” he says. “It feels very special when you go in there.” Is Paul Smith similar?
“[We’re both] about ‘no compromise,” he says. “Just get on with it.”
Sadly events – and Rachel Reeves – keep conspiring to make “getting on with it” in business in Britain more difficult than ever. Sir Paul still keeps to the same exacting routine. He rises early, often at 5am, and goes for a swim at 6am – he is a member of the RAC (Royal Automobile Club) on Pall Mall. He is at his desk amid the clutter by 7am, always in a suit, ready to answer his endless correspondence and set about managing a worldwide clothing and design empire. Perhaps because of this regime, he is in remarkably good nick for someone who will turn 80 in a couple of years.
But the stresses on the business have only increased with the passing years. Rachel Reeves’ Budget, with its National Insurance rises for employers, is only the latest challenge.
“It’s going to cost us a lot,” he says. “Just NI, overnight, will cost us £350,000 more, which means £1 million in revenue [to cover the expense].
“There’s no Russian business any more. That was £5 million. No duty-free shopping. It just keeps coming.” Punch after punch? “Yes. Obviously, Brexit was incredibly complicated and difficult. There is just an enormous quantity of countries we sell to that we don’t have a trade agreement with. Then you have to spend a lot on readjusting all your systems.”
“It’s naughty because we’ll really struggle with the extra [NI contributions],” he says. “Then you’ve got minimum wage. We agree with it, but it’s a burden. Most companies worldwide are still suffering from Covid.”
“I understand that there’s a lot to be fixed,” he adds. “We’ve had to deal with a lot. Business-wise, [Labour] have to be really careful they don’t cut off their nose to spite their face. A lot of businesses are on a wing and a prayer. You’ve got to be careful you don’t pull the rug away from people.”
Year-round, he must stay on top of trends in all of Paul Smith’s different markets. He spends around half the year on the road, checking in on the global business.
“Obviously you don’t sell tweed in a country that never gets cold, or itchy things in humid countries, and you absolutely know what works where. We have a shorter, squarer jacket for Asia – if you’re allowed to call it Asia any more?” I think you are, I say.
“Yeah? Because of PC [political correctness] now, I get so nervous about things, because of my age,” he says. “You always spoke so openly about things and now I find it more difficult. I don’t want to make a mistake or offend anyone, but you get so muddled. I get nervous because as a company we’re so down to earth.
“With my parents, the whole language was so different. Beautifully innocent and correct and not horrible in any way. I always feel very sorry for someone who has been picked up on [language]. They probably just didn’t know.”
Along with political correctness, there has been a rise in that other bugbear of many an entrepreneur: working from home. We speak on a Friday afternoon, when entire floors of the HQ – where 200 people work – are deserted.
“I don’t like it,” he says. “I like people. Luckily the designing is still very hands-on and you still have to be face-to-face for that. But for IT and marketing, it’s all just very different to what it used to be. I would prefer everyone to be in. I understand why, that standing on a cold station or wanting to lie in bed a bit longer. But if you ask me what I prefer, honestly, it would be the spirit of a company that’s individually owned, that’s full of nice people. I don’t know how anyone meets anybody anymore.
“Friends with other businesses say it’s just the norm now. If you were to say anything opposite, the candidates would probably just leave at the interview.”
He has long pleaded with the government to take fashion and design more seriously, with limited success. “In the early days I’d get myself into Downing Street and speak to Thatcher or Heseltine or Blair and put my fight up for design,” he says. “They just didn’t get design at all. I’d tell them it’s not about having red hair and showing your boobs. It’s about the design of a wheelchair or a tap for people with rheumatism. They still never really got it.”
There are not many young people with Sir Paul’s combination of eye, drive and charm in any generation, but it is especially difficult to see how a working-class lad would build an empire today. He was born in 1946, the youngest of three children of Harold, a tailor, and Irene. He grew up in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, and left school at 15 to work in a clothes warehouse while he prepared to be a professional cyclist. 
Recovering from a bike accident at 17, he was drawn to fashion. After learning his trade as a tailor and shop assistant on Savile Row at the height of the Swinging Sixties, Sir Paul opened his first shop in Nottingham in 1970, a tiny space with just three metres of floor space. His classic but playful menswear quickly won him fans. 
He opened on Floral Street in Covent Garden six years later. Japan, where Paul Smith is enormous, followed in 1984, New York in 1987; next stop the world. No big breaks, no corporate buyout, just learning what he is good at, sticking to his guns and working hard.
“You probably could [make it as a designer today], but the percentages of people who will make it will be very small,” he says. “Almost nobody. Because there are so many [challenges]. If big companies around the world who are not telling the truth about how their business is, if they’re fighting fires, imagine starting out.”
“The big brands 40 years ago would probably have 10 shops. Now they’ve got 4,000. Multiply that by all the brands and it’s hardly surprising business is slowing down.”
He has little time for the big conglomerates who snap up any company that raises its head above the parapet.
“You could draw strong parallels with the dictators in the world and why they do things that they do,” he says. “It’s to do with personal ego and greed and power. If you imagine there are parallels with many different businesses, where they don’t need more. But they love the chase.”
Speaking of power, Sir Paul says there is a clear line between habits of manners, language and dress and the wider landscape.
“If you think about America, one of the reasons [Trump] did so well is because his language is so sloppy,” he says. “It’s so of now in America because there has been such a deterioration of language and manners, probably because of certain games and films.
“If you think about the Victorians and how rigidly they used to dress, Edwardians and how they used to dress, it was very formal. Then there was a bit of rebelliousness with the Mods, but it was still suits. As soon as you hit the late Sixties with the hair and the flowers, clothes got a lot more relaxed. And since Covid the suit has been thought of in such a different way. In the north of England there are hardly any suits sold any more.”
The suit talk reminds me of the dapper actor Bill Nighy. Unsurprisingly, he is a good friend of Smith’s. They are sometimes mistaken for each other. They are both warm, stylish Englishmen of a certain age, who mix tradition with cool, business with pleasure, and who make you feel hopeful about the country. When I interviewed Nighy last year, he said he thought fashion had been “downhill since about 1947”. Back then you could pick someone off the street and they’d look alright, he said. Today it’s chaos.
“Bill’s not wrong at all,” he says. “I wear suits every day. I was here for 16 weeks on my own in this building during Covid and I had a suit on every day. I never thought about it. I wear a suit on Saturday and Sunday. To me, it’s just really practical.”
He is a creature of habit in his personal life, too. He has been with his wife, Pauline since he was 21 and Pauline was 27. They met when he was a student at art college where she was a teacher. He credits her with the idea of opening their own shop.
They have no children together, but Pauline had two sons already, one of whom worked at Paul Smith before going into acting. The family have houses in Holland Park and Italy. “It’s a nice life, but we’ve got no private jets or yachts or whatever,” he says.
The question of succession has swirled around Sir Paul for years. He is unusual in still being the majority owner of his company. But at 78, he must accept he will not be around forever, however much he swims.
“I’d like to pass it on to some really good kids here,” he says. “Twenty-five to 30 year olds. I’d like to pass it on to them.” Will he hand it over while he’s alive? “Probably. These things take so long and you want to be careful about who it goes to. You don’t want it to go to some financial institution that will build it up and flog it on. Lots of people will want to do that, but you’ll know it’ll turn into a Jimmy Choo, where you don’t have any pride in it. I’d sooner have a tiny business and shrink it down and have it be a really nice business. It can go bigger but it’s not about size, it’s about the principle of it coming from the heart, not the wallet.”
Apart from that, what would make him stop working?
“Dying!”, comes the jaunty reply.
When Sir Paul says it, even that sounds like a gift.
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