Silk, Wool, Cashmere

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1:49Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo line sheet. And today with me on the show are designers Paul Smith and Gabriella Hurst. They're here to chat about their recent collaboration and plenty more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck where I send an email called line sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line sheet is scoopy analytical and above all fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more.

2:39If you're interested, listeners of fashion people get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you're having a great week. I am in Paris this week. I'm taking the day off today to hang out with my good friend, the famous podcaster, Amanda Dobbins of Jam Session and the big picture. She's in town from Cannes. I'm looking forward to hearing how it was. Then I'm headed to the UK tomorrow morning for the wedding of the one and only Gabby Katz. It's going to be me and a room full of publicists and Gabriella Karifa Johnson as well.

3:14I will report back. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of Instagrams that I will not be re-gramming. Congrats to Gabby and Owen. We couldn't be happier for you all. This week in line, we launched a new column with Molly, the genius data analyst behind Style Analytics. You'll probably follow her on Instagram. She looked into why brands should be paying more attention about what people say about them on Reddit. It's really interesting. I am very, I love data, but only if it's entertaining and insightful. And I think Molly really nails it. And I think you'll really enjoy it. I also have my take on the LV cruise show in New York, which, you know, it is what it is.

3:54And whatever you want to say about Nicola Jess Garrett, and especially the last few years at LV, he's extremely talented. He's generationally talented, was probably the most important designer of the 2000s maybe I mean Hedy Sloman was but Nikola was more important to me as a consumer so you know we can't we can't not give him that but it's obvious and I've written this before it's time for a change at Louis Vuitton women's maybe men's too but definitely women's I also have some Chanel pricing updates I did some reporting on the cost of the cruise shows and there's obviously lots more also are you based in the UK do you live in London do you love Bister Village are you obsessed with shopping do you love Alex Eagle are you a big fashion people listener do you want to go to Bister Village on Thursday May 28th for a live taping of fashion people with me and Alex It starts around 5 p.m.

4:55If you are interested in attending, you can email Eric. It's just E-R-I-C at puck.news, and we will get you sorted. If you have any questions about it, I guess you could DM me on Instagram. I'd really prefer you just email Eric, though, in this case. But you should come. It'll be fun. I'm going to go to Saint Laurent before and see if I can get some jeans. Anyway, have a lovely weekend, and let's get going with this Gabby and Paul. They are amazing and Paul is a true legend. Gabby is a legend in the making and it's just a really interesting conversation. Paul Smith and Gabriella Hurst, welcome to Fashion People.

5:36Hello, hello. Welcome. I'm in London. Gabriella, where are you? I'm in New York and I'm so happy to be with you and Lauren. and just any time with Paul Smith, Lauren, it's a great time. I've been with him for two minutes and I can already tell. So what did you all have for breakfast this morning? Well, I swim at five o 'clock every morning. So before that is at One Apple. And then after that is Boatje Mousselet. And then I arrive at the office around six. So then I enjoy peace and quiet for about one and a half hours. And Gabriela came here, so she knows there's lots to do in this room. Oh my God.

6:23I mean, I need to talk about that. I really need to express your world. Please go ahead if Lauren's okay with that. I had blueberries and egg. I took my kid to school and I exercised as well. We need it. We need it. It's important. Yeah, absolutely. You go on the machine. But Laura, I have to tell you, because, you know, I'm turning 50 this year. So I feel like I have some, you know, gravitas of saying I've been around. I've seen things. I've never seen anything like Paul's studio. It is like the Alibaba cave, you know, it's all these objects. And I've met creative people, designers. I am so lucky.

7:17All of these artifacts that you see everywhere, they're gifts that people send him daily, daily from all over the world. He gets gifts from bicycles that a woman brought from Russia. That's from the US. I remember that one. But they all make them craft gifts. They're craft gifts. Do you understand? Like we need to do an exhibit of this because it's craft the most incredible, a collection of stamps, a collection of embroidered letters. It's like he's like a god for craft and design and all of the world are sending him gifts. I know I have to talk about it because you're too much of a sir and a gentleman and you will not self-bloat.

8:00But this is love to a degree. Oh, that's the letter. See? Embroidered. Embroidered. Who is the embroidered letter from again? This is just from a young lady who said, I absolutely love, love, love, love embroidery. I would love to show you some sometime. That was it. What's so delightful, Lauren, and Gabrielle has been very kind, But what's so delightful, I do get things daily. And what's so amazing in today's what's in it for me world that we live in, people just send things with no request, just to send things, just to communicate. It's really humbling. It's really beautiful and very humbling.

8:47These just came from, I'm just showing everybody. These just came from Jamie Oliver. They're some walking sticks. Where are they from? They're black and white, cream and white. Yeah, they're from Tuscany. Sorry, I just dropped my headphones. They're from Tuscany. He hand-carved them with his friend. They're from a ward in Tuscany, and they're hand-carved like sticks, walking sticks. And he just sent them to me. And then I've got one lady from Japan that just sends me carved fish that she paints. You remember those, Gabriela? Yeah, I remember. Do you have this suitcase that your wife made you so you could escape the meetings in Japan?

9:28Because I love that one. This is why I've made... Amazing. Oh, my God. It's like a diorama. Is that your house? It's your train. This is a train set. Yeah, when the meetings were too boring, she said, just get your train set out and say you don't want to continue the meeting. So I carry it around the world. And when the meetings gets... I just get that train out. it does feel like i'm looking inside both of your brains because i'm also looking in your office gabriella with all of your family photos and your books and your your artifact you have gorgeous things too yeah and then paul the it's it's amazing it's truly your studio is truly amazing i know that paul looks the same age as i am but i'm actually younger so when i get to paul's age maybe I can get something like this but I have to tell you this are like I mean the love people have for you is because you have this love for craft and design and inspired us all so I'm just like I'll get there I don't know if I get there to that level I think you're already there with your love of craft and your upbringing in the ranch and your your sustainability passion and that's exactly what we try to do you know um we're still an independent company lauren i'm not sure whether you know that but we're both independent we both neither of us were trained formally uh in you know in fashion school so um both of us it's learning by doing it you know that's what we've uh how we've developed both of our businesses and And mine has been going longer because I'm extremely old.

11:20That's why he sent me walking sticks. Well, I bet you don't need to use them with all that swimming. How did you two meet? Gabriella, did you send an embroidered letter? Kind of not, but similar. We have a friend in common, Wesley Shultz, the lead singer of the Lemineers. And he said to me, you and Paul are going to connect. He said, like, you guys are very similar. I guess that the energy he thought. And we were introduced by text messages. So in a way, we've been like pen pals and so many bits of wisdom that he just spills. You know, one day he's like texting me and he's like, I'm like asking, where are you?

12:05And he's like, I'm in the shop. He goes to the shop all the time. and this is Paul Smith and he describes himself as the shopkeeper. And I just love that because this is really the humbleness of the greats, you know, and it's really once a shopkeeper, always a shopkeeper, you know? Yeah, I work in the store every Saturday. I have lots of stores, but the one in Mayfair in London, and it's really fantastic because you meet, you know, you meet such interesting people and you learn so much as well. And it's quite amusing, you know, quite sometimes because a lot of people don't really know that you're the man with the name above the door.

12:47I bet a lot of people do, though. And there's lots of selfies going on. That is true. That is true. We have a lot of people from the United States come as well. We had a gentleman from the United States and he was buying a suit and I was pinning the trousers up on this gentleman. And he was talking to his wife and he said to his wife, he said, oh, yes, you know, you know, Jack, you know, Jack. And the wife said, Jack. And he said, yeah, Jack. He said, Paul Smith's supposed to be a nice guy. And I was pinning the man's trousers up and he didn't realize it was me like just pinning the trousers up.

13:28So it was quite amusing. Gabriella, how do you interact with the store? I bet you do a lot of clinics, right? Clinics, I do films. I personally take off, authorize the VM for every one of our stores. Yeah, that's wonderful. Because I don't have window displays or mannequins. And so we always wanted to achieve this transparency. And I really thought about the psychology of a store when we opened our store in Madison, because it was the beginning of we had a hit out of the tracks with our bags. But I put the bags all the way in the back and I had a very small store, but the productivity is super high.

14:13So I have this very specific language that I wanted to tell in retail, which has worked for us. But the VM is like religion. I change it every week. we changed the vm and because it's we all the only thing we have to sell you is product right and how you have to see this product and see the difference especially in uh in the artificiality of what we live today you know i can really tell when a product looks real and it's and another one is just like a digital product right like it's just for the digital world and and so for us it's like you have to see the product and there's no window displays, nothing to distract you except product.

14:56So VM is religion. So I oversee every single VM of every store. Visual merchandising for those of us not in the biz. Yeah. It's key, but it's key because I've experienced it. It's like you can shift the energy of the VM and you could have a low day the day before and you shifted the vm and it went especially in new york it became a very local and mayfair as well we became a very local shopping uh with the locals do you both sell suits more than anything else definitely for me yes it's a 25 of our business yeah it's big it's big and every color and they want it like yeah but your suits are so great with a fantastic the the trouser shape is so great wonderful the only the only time the only time i i've seen a trouser similar to that was when i was 18 and i made trousers for jimmy page you know of led zeppelin and uh and uh he you know he was 18 or i was 18 we probably were both 18 and i put the tape measure around his waist and he was 24 inch waist and the bottoms were 28 inch so so you know you're you're you do these wonderful shaped trousers which are great i've got my hair actually uh they're fantastic yeah really beautiful yeah yeah i love that you both you both have such an incredible sense of color and i paul gave me a sneak peek of of some of the pieces from the collect the collaboration and they're just it's truly incredible how did you two so you went from being pen pals to doing this whole men's and women's full collection like what how did you end up working together you know what's so great is that you know that you know even being pen pals we feel close to each well I did feel close to you hopefully vice versa and you know one day you know Gabriella just said oh why don't we do some sort of collaboration you know so we just talked about it and my father I've just dropped my earring again but anyway I can still hear you and my dad was an amateur photographer and so I've got thousands of his photographs and so we just talked about it and said why don't we use some of my dad's pictures you know because I'm quite well known for my photographic printing onto fabric and that's really how it started.

17:32It was quite quick as well, wasn't it, Gabriela? When something clicks and it comes from the heart, it flows. And that was definitely, yes, it was very much straightforward. Paul said, let's work with some of the images of my father. And I thought that was really personal because I also have lost my father and the connection of having that as a reference always is important in the design, at least for me. And he chose the two images and then we selected, I think, from a few and we end up in two. And then we tartar it, we jacquard it, we knitted it, we took it in all the different cooking methods.

18:19And it's beautiful. And you came to London with your two assistants. and I think they enjoyed the building as well, I think, didn't they? I mean, it's... Lauren, you have to go. This is an experience. Because first of all, it will center, at least for me, what I felt is like it just brings you to what's important immediately. Do you know what I mean? It is like this is why we do what we do and it's just so incredibly inspiring. You live with energy and every one of my team members left with energy. And, you know, as you said, the boring meetings with a train, I was thinking there's two types of meetings, right?

19:02The one that they suck your energy and the one that gives you energy. And so the ones that you leave with energy. So if you're in London, you must go because you will only feel better. I gotta go. I'm coming three times next month and I need to be in this life-giving studio. It is truly incredible. The colors everywhere, the imager. It's like if you're a visual person, it's like you have just landed in heaven. There's nowhere you cannot stop looking. It's like this, like this, like this. And it's beauty everywhere, you know? It's really beauty. Never have I wished that we did a video podcast more than today.

19:42Because not only do you both look great, but also it's so fun to just like look behind you and see what's going on. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And they're made like everything else, through hard work. Well, a Chevy Silverado was made for hard work and designed to handle the big jobs. With over 13 ,000 pounds of towing capacity and trailering sway control, Chevy Silverado can haul the biggest loads on the roughest roads. It's a true workhorse. Right now, get 0 % APR financing on a Silverado 1500 5.3 liter pickup. It doesn't get any lower than zero. See your Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana Chevy dealers for details.

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20:55how are you two from a process perspective and the way you work do you work because you do have very similar energy i can feel the like connection between the two brands so much when i heard about this i it just like made me so excited how do you do you all have a similar design process or is it totally different and what was that like to work together on this i think i mean color love of color love of texture simplicity keep the styles that we you know the actual models we've done are quite simple very beautiful cuts but very much about relying on color and photography and that's why when we did it it was actually pretty straightforward you know very quick yeah i usually paint a lot like that's like the resort yeah wonderful similar colors exactly and now like this is poetry that a friend of mine that is sick actually wrote and it's really really good and it inspired me so it's here's her poetry so I'll paint and then this will inform but it's you know the lovely they're so beautiful and then I'll sketch so beautiful so it's kind of like I feed the team with sketches because that's a lot of people don't know this is like that I sketch a lot and so this and then but with Paul I already had the sketch in the shape of of the photos so like i'll take sections like for example if i like really this color situation i'll take sections of that but i'm wearing wow stripes also for you paul oh wonderful colors it was all of the colors of maria jimbutas the stripes we did it in the fabric it looks beautiful it's it's know what we have in common though we we we both are very analog like nobody can um like the way that paul has the the you know how he comes up with his iconic stripes it's not oh yeah it is not um it is we take it yeah we do the stripes with a piece of card and then yarn and then we just wrap around the yarn and build up the colors and so we do it very by hand because yarn is three-dimensional so the colors reflect on each other and so I think we're probably the only one that does it that way because most people use computers all the time but I use something called a notepad and a pen.

23:28I use my I use my pens by my painting stuff to do it but method is it's incredible. I've just put a mustache on you, Gabriella. Just for all the listeners, Paul just pulled a notepad out of his jacket and a pen. A jolly colored pen. A jolly colored pen, the same color of the trousers that they have designed together. Paul, do you sketch also? No, I'm not very good at sketching. I write notes more. just sort of and designed by words more which is quite interesting yeah I could write like butterfly wings or something like that and to me I know what that means iridescent colours colours that clash so more of a words person how did you actually put it together?

24:24did you all just sit in a room and say we're going to do we want to do the did you have a bunch of words and Gabriela sketched a bunch of pictures how did you do it okay so we basically selected the images um one is like a beautiful mountain and then there's the waterfalls and we we chose these based on the color on the images of the of paul's dad and then we put it in some of our um iconic silhouettes and then Paul's team edited and decided. So it's extremely collaborative in the sense of how we would put it together. And then we did a fitting together in London where we played around with his silhouettes and they created looks.

25:14And the way that we shot it and styled it is all done with cool New Yorks. Because, you know, for the new audience that they don't know this, but Paul is one of the original punks.

25:29So, we had to have that edginess. That edginess had to come through the way we shot it as well. Yeah. One of the most interesting things is my team downstairs, literally, if you come, Lauren, you would see, but for yourself. I'm coming. Yeah. Because, you know. You need to come. Yeah, because this is what is called engineered. It's engineered. so I just showed a jacket and obviously if you do a polka dot you can print it by the meter you cut it anywhere but if you want a scene like this is a mountain and you want it to always be on the same place of a jacket so you have to engineer the print so my team downstairs they make a little maquette in paper like a little dolls looks like a doll's dress or a doll's jacket and then they make that and then we work it out and then we do the grading for the different sizes.

26:24And so it's actually quite precise. But luckily, the team are so used to working with me on things like that. So it was not easy, but it was straightforward. You're tailoring training. How is your tailoring different in terms of how you do tailoring? Because I assume your methods are totally different or maybe they're not maybe i'm wrong um can i go first uh yeah no go ahead um my my wife um studied uh at the royal college of art and it's a very interesting time with uh the same time as david hocney peter blake and many of the the the great the great artists was all at the same time and she studied couture fashion so it was when i met her i was 21 and and she took taught me at the on the kitchen table about making making clothes from a blank sheet of paper cutting out that and how to make clothes and then as a young man i i went to a lot of the couture shows in paris so i went to i saw with her and we went to san loran with san loran alive there and he did the first smoking suit and he had a she she had a trouser suit on which was considered outrageous uh and uh chanel with chanel sitting on the stairs and um and so my tellering has been very much about how to make clothes uh what what a pad stitch does pad stitch is something that you you put on the front of the jacket and as you uh go near to the rappel you pull the thread tighter and it rolls the lapel.

28:09It rolls the lapel. And how you put something in the end of the shoulder to give a shoulder more strength. So that's the way I learned. And then Gabriela, I'm not sure. Well, Gabriela, I used to have another company called Candela, which I started with very little money,$700 each partners, back in 2003. So it was contemporary. and I learned a lot by thousands of mistakes, years of mistakes. That's what people don't know. Success comes from mistakes. They don't come from one hit after another. It comes from being tired to lose. Gorilla Hearts really was, I wanted to learn about tailoring. At that price point and the tailoring I wanted to do, I couldn't do it in Candela.

29:03So it was really an experiment. And you see in the first collection, it was my first attempt at doing tailoring. But I grew up going to an English school. So I wore uniforms all my life. So I'm very comfortable in a blazer. So, and I understood. And then working through the years, learning more the constructions. We have an incredible supplier, Bombersardi in Italy because it's still family owned and I love to tell how great they are they still do it all it's inside canvas it's done the old school way top stitch everything by hand this is all hand stitched yeah all hand stitched the pad stitching creates the roll here and this is something in the end there like a little wadding they call it demet and that gives the strength of the shoulder Paul is holding up one of the jackets with the photo realistic.

30:03And then I'm holding up a, this is a little, this is a pattern for a beautiful coat made by Pauline for my birthday. Amazing. She just made the little pattern from a blank sheet of paper for my wife. So it's so delightful. This is a little twirl on a stand that I'm showing everybody. It looks lovely. It's long. Will it be long when you... Yes, it's a very fitted coat and very long.

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31:37What do you both, you're both wearing jackets right now. I'm not because I just, yeah, basically. I mean, I went for a coffee meeting in the morning around the corner. But I wear blazers a lot and I love them. What do you think in this era of I'm wearing a sweatshirt, people wear leggings every day. In America, it's even more pronounced than in Europe, I think. But what is the power of it, the magic of wearing one? Like you both clearly are so comfortable in a jacket. Some people aren't. What attracts you all to that kind of fashion? for me you can never be overdressed or underdressed in a suit so it's like a security right it's like an armor it's like and especially uh for women i feel that um shaping the the the suit one also for men but it frame i like my my design aesthetic is that what we do frames the person the the clothes doesn't scream you see the person right first more than the clothes but it frames it and a suit is the most successful tool to always frame it in that way yeah i agree i mean any any museum where you go in the world uh the great masters will have a frame around them and so um you know the suit is like the frame and then your character can come from the shirt the the scarf the socks the accoutrements that you put with the with the the frame and of course the you know you if you you a uniform a lot of people think the suit is like a uniform and it it can be but it's also it makes you feel very good it's very practical it's got pockets you've got things for your spectacles, for your credit cards, for your phone.

33:43It's a lovely thing. And, of course, in the early 80s, Mr. Armani, who was a pal of mine in Italy, and me in London, we both decided, without realising it, that we just deconstructed the suit. And so we just made the suit. You know, the suit a few years ago would have been like this, you know, like the front would be really solid. And now we we made it very soft. We took away a lot of the pads. And so it's right wearing a cardigan, really. So it's a very different, different thing. I've got a real hunch about the next generation with with tailoring and with suits, because I think that, you know, since covid uh so many people are dressing in a very casual way that i think you know the the kids that are coming up are 14 15 now a lot certainly we're seeing it in london a lot of the young 18 year old bands 18 20 year olds they play on the street here in soho right near here and they're wearing four button suits now shirts and ties with blonde hair looking really sexy looking really great.

34:53So I think it's just reinventing the attitude of a suit. It's not actually the suit. It's the fact that suit isn't about weddings and funerals and job interviews. It's actually just a very cool thing to wear. Yeah. What do you think, Gabriella? I agree. And I think that the best compliment I ever have is when I have women or CEOs and I've had all sort of women in the, in all different fields, just, you know, doing the fight. And they come to me and when they tell me how good they feel in our suits, how powerful they feel in our suits. And we go to every single extent that you can imagine from, this is how much I love women.