Sir Paul Smith sat down with Tatler during his first visit to Hong Kong in five years to discuss his latest collaboration with emerging fashion brand Commission, mentoring upcoming designers and more
Playful and expressive, Sir Paul Smith’s design philosophy requires no further elaboration. The designer has long nurtured emerging fashion creatives, and in recent years has done so in a more formal way.
In 2020, he established Paul Smith’s Foundation, an organisation set up to offer advice to those in creative industries and provide long-term mentorships to young designers striving to build sustainable business models. These mentorships have given birth to collaborations under the name “&PaulSmith”, fostering not only creative exchange but also a shared focus on craftsmanship and culture.
Smith set out to support one designer each year for the programme, and worked closely with institutions such as the British Fashion Council to identify emerging talents. This year, he also joined forces with The Council
of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), which provided a shortlist of emerging American fashion designers to collaborate with, and he landed on rising US brand Commission.
Following the recent release of Commission &PaulSmith, Smith shared with Tatler the delight he feels when collaborating with young designers, emphasises the importance of ongoing mentorship, and explains why the art of tailoring remains as relevant as ever.
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What was it about Commission that prompted you to collaborate on the latest &PaulSmith collection?
They design real clothes that are highly wearable. The work from other candidates is amazing but a bit overdesigned for me. Paul Smith’s designs are all about wearability, and that’s probably why we’ve had such longevity.
You know, [the clothes] arrive in a box, you open the box on a rainy Tuesday somewhere in the world, put them on a hanger and people enjoy wearing them. [Commission] is a young brand based in New York, founded by Dylan Cao from Vietnam and Jin Kay from Korea, who draw inspiration from their parents’ wardrobes, which adds an intriguing element to their designs.
How did you bring together the signature styles from both brands?
[Cao and Kay] had access to the 4,000 archive designs we have in our office and eventually selected the ones that resonated with them. We gave them the freedom to interpret those designs.
Interestingly, my father was an amateur photographer, and he captured what we refer to as “caught moments”, when people were captured in between movements. [The Commission designers] truly embraced this idea, and it became the concept of the campaign as well.