By Dexter "Box-Office" Reel
Sir Paul Smith built an empire on a signature: candy-colored stripes, a wink of humor, and a refusal to take fashion too seriously. Now, with a new autobiography out, the 79-year-old designer gave BBC News a walking tour of his London headquarters, tracing the path from a small Nottingham shop to a label that dresses runways and regular wardrobes alike.
According to BBC Entertainment & Arts, the tour doubled as a retrospective on Smith's career, including his fondness for the eccentric touches — among them, rubber chickens — that have become something of a house trademark alongside his rainbow stripes. The BBC did not detail the full contents of the memoir, but the visit framed it as Smith's own account of "conquering the fashion world" on his own, decidedly unstuffy terms.
Smith has long been an outlier in an industry known for austere seriousness — his stripes turning up on everything from suits to bicycles to a Mini Cooper — and the timing of the book, alongside the office tour, suggests a designer eager to control the narrative of his own five-decade run while he's still around to tell it.
What's missing from the available reporting is the memoir's title, publisher and specific anecdotes beyond the headquarters walkthrough — details this desk will chase down before drawing any conclusions about whether the book itself lives up to the man's reputation for charm. For now, the story is simply this: a designer who made his name refusing to be predictable is, fittingly, telling it his own way.
Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: too early to say, but a designer who built a career on rubber chickens has earned the benefit of the doubt.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Entertainment & Arts.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."