Paul Smith talks Instagram and his latest Printed Pages back cover

Date
8 April 2015

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” The line is Marcel Proust’s, quoted by Paul Smith at an Instagram event in London last week in which the fashion designer and bona fide national treasure spoke about his love of the photo-sharing platform, his longstanding passion for photography and his incredulity at how many people look, but don’t see. It’s not a problem for Paul, who finds inspiration in all manner of things and takes the opportunity to absorb what he encounters in his day-to-day life.

Paul was bitten by the photography bug after his dad – himself a keen amateur photographer – gave him a Kodak Retinette when he was just 11. His dad had converted the attic into a dark room and Paul remembers with relish the hours spent developing pictures, superimposing one visual over another and “holding back” the image. “I thought it was magical,” he says. He has taken photographs for years and at his offices, his designers can delve into huge folders of thousands of his pictures collected down the decades. “They are pretty well organised,” Paul says. “If you came in and said ‘Has he been to Greece?’ they’d be able to say yeah in June 2013 or whatever…”

He always used cameras until his friend Jony Ive gave him an iPhone, although things got off to an inauspicious start. “I could barely get in the box let alone use the product,” he admits, but once he got his head round it and was switched onto Instagram, it opened up a whole new world for Paul. “The main thing with my Instagram is there is no big psychological or emotional thing. I just take the pictures.

“When you’ve got all the big things I have to deal with, it suddenly starts getting grown-up – you have quantities of people and lots of clients looking for an idea. It gets formulaic and you have to pay attention but the great thing about Instagram is that it’s so free. I don’t have to analyse it, I don’t have to ask anybody. It’s very immediate and totally spontaneous.”

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Paul Smith: In the swimming pool

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Paul Smith: Early Easter bonnet

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Paul Smith: Nice colours

He admits he’s delighted that his Instagram account – with its 200,000 followers and #takenbypaul hashtag – has proved so popular although he’s clearly still a little baffled by its success. “It’s very humbling that people are interested in the pictures I take, I’m amazed really. The only trouble is it’s never about my job – my team ask me, ‘Is there any chance of including a jacket?’ Absolutely not! It’s a bit of creativity that is free of consideration.”

For the last seven issues of Printed Pages we have used one of Paul’s Instagram images for the bespoke back cover advert and they’ve been consistent only in their eclecticism; from a flagpole to a neckerchief-wearing dog, and an inflatable unicorn stuck in a tree to Paul’s shadow standing on one leg. For the upcoming issue, Paul selected an intriguing shot of a pool with a gust of wind blowing across the surface.

“It was in Morocco – I was there for a few days off which is a miracle in itself for me – and it was in the hotel where I was staying. l I just liked the fact there were all different colours of green and there was a bit of a ripple which is nice with water because that’s the nature of it, the fact it moves around and catches the wind.” He continues: “The colours in that pool could easily influence the print of a shirt or the colours in a piece of knitwear. Often things I take very instantly and without a lot of consideration, when I am flicking through them on a plane or something I think, ‘Ooh that could work as a sweater…’”

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Paul Smith: Pins at the ready… Show preparations are underway!

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Paul Smith: It’s Monday, what a shock!

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Paul Smith: Amazing London morning

Looking through his recent Instagram photos – an eclectic selection that includes an electricity warning sign, some pigeons and a blurred crowd – he says that “two or three could end up on some clothes somewhere.”

He says: “In the 1980s I was the absolute pioneer in the whole world – it sounds a bit big-headed to say – but I was the pioneer of photographic print onto fabric.” Paul found a factory in Italy which was scraping a living printing “pictures of fruit onto hideous tablecloths” and got them to print some of his pictures onto shirts. They were such a hit that the factory went from operating a two-day week to a five- or even seven-day stint instead.

And this relationship between photography, creativity, fashion, design and commercial opportunity is nothing new. “The first time I ever used a photograph in my work I was 15 or 16 working as a run-around, a gopher, at a warehouse in Nottingham. I was a keen cyclist so I used to take my camera with me and take pictures in the countryside in Derbyshire. My boss said to me business was a bit quiet and could I do something called a display. So I took some old man’s corduroy’s trousers and an old flannel shirt and got one of my photographs that I printed up in my dad’s darkroom of the Beeley Moor in Derbyshire. I brought in some heather from the moor too and did this display and we started selling more. I just remembered that now, talking to you. The corduroy trousers actually started selling so I got a few brownie points form Mr Fletcher!”

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Paul Smith: Marcel Proust quote

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Paul Smith: Detail of Ann Carrington’s amazing work at my Mayfair shop

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Paul’s previous Printed Pages covers

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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