{"id":104703,"date":"2026-08-16T20:48:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/104703\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T20:48:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:48:52","slug":"paul-smith-keeps-his-london-home-tranquil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/104703\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Smith keeps his London home tranquil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018This\u2019, says Sir Paul Smith<\/a>, \u2018is the reason why Pauline won\u2019t come into this room anymore. It disturbs her. It\u2019s too cluttered for her. It\u2019s too\u2026 much.\u2019 Pauline is, of course, his beloved wife, the woman he credits with helping to fashion Paul Smith the man and brand; the \u2018this\u2019 \u2013 the thing that gives her the heebie-jeebies \u2013 is the designer\u2019s studio at company HQ in London. It was where he might be found during much of lockdowns I and II, working all alone on successive collections in a building that normally thrums with the activity of 180 or so employees, and it\u2019s where we\u2019re compelled to meet, via the wizardry of Zoom. That\u2019s no bad thing, however, a man cave telling us much about a man\u2019s character \u2013 and, though it\u2019s really quite different, his marital home.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

The house stands in a square developed in the 1850s that the couple had long admired. Seen past white hydrangeas, the Mini in the frame recalls the model covered in trademark stripes that was one of several collaborations aired in the Design Museum\u2019s 2013 retrospective of Sir Paul\u2019s career<\/p>\n

\u00a9simon upton<\/p>\n

At first glance all looks perfectly orderly, perfectly Paul Smithian, in fact: behind him is the sort of arty gallery wall that will be familiar from any number of his 100-plus shops worldwide, this one featuring a Dame Laura Knight, a Cecil Beaton<\/a> pen-and-ink drawing and a sketch by Yves Saint Laurent. But then his director of brand and communications swivels the camera to address the elephant in the (Zoom) room: books and periodicals by the thousand, piles and piles of tchotchkes and toys, enough cycling paraphernalia to furnish a museum. And that\u2019s before you even get to the bikes. Er, how many exactly? There\u2019s a sharp intake of breath. \u2018Seventeen. Five in this room and 12 next door,\u2019 he says, gesturing to an antechamber. I mutter something impolite about it resembling a Channel 5 documentary on hoarding and it\u2019s to Sir Paul\u2019s great credit that he chooses to run with the quip rather than abruptly press the button marked \u2018end meeting\u2019. Geniality is him all over. The interesting thing, he says proudly, is that the architects David Chipperfield and John Pawson<\/a>, archminimalists both, have visited the studio and \u2018didn\u2019t have heart attacks\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018This\u2019, says Sir Paul Smith, \u2018is the reason why Pauline won\u2019t come into this room anymore. It disturbs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[1109,2089,5274,40828,43839,27],"class_list":["post-104703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-fashion","tag-homes","tag-houses","tag-interior-design","tag-interior-features","tag-london"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117107161002191419","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}