‘I’ve got more of a sense of humour than Ralph Lauren’ – nine things we learned from Paul Smith’s new memoir

In July, the British designer Paul Smith celebrated his 80th birthday and he has now released a memoir to mark the occasion. Threads: My Life in Style tells Smith’s story, from growing up in Nottingham and leaving school with no qualifications to selling suits to celebs, including Gary Oldman and David Bowie.

Here are nine of our favourite lesser-known takeaways from the book.

1. He made boxers something you want to be seen inIn the 70s, Smith reimagined boxers in clashing prints and colours, such as polka dots and stripes rather than drab greys and whites, catapulting them from the back of the underwear drawer to the pages of fashion magazines. “I always describe my early success as nudging rather than shoving the British male into appreciating the fact that you could be a little different,” he writes.

2. He has a love/hate relationship with stripesSmith describes the multi-stripe he has become synonymous with as “both a joy and a curse”. It was a design detail forced upon him in his early days due to budget constraints, but quickly became popular among his customers. “It began to take on a life of its own,” Smith writes. However, it “became a bit of a burden to me if to no one else. You meet people who say, ‘Oh, you’re the one who’s famous for the stripes.’ It’s like being Calvin Klein – you can make beautiful clothes every year but someone will always say, ‘Oh, you’re the one who makes underpants.’ You find yourself having to work around it.”

3. He’s to blame for the rise of novelty socks

In the 1980s, Smith says men only bought two types of socks: plain or argyle patterned. After coming across a pair with a paperclip motif in Japan, he brought the design to the UK. Now he sells more than 700,000 pairs of socks a year. “Quite often when I’m introduced to someone new he’ll say, ‘Oh yes – I get your socks for Christmas,’” Smith writes.

4. His office is the original example of curated chaosPiles of vinyl records, 28 bicycles (including the yellow Pinarello Chris Froome rode to victory in the Tour de France), a model train set, hundreds of books and oil paintings and a Snoopy telephone are just some of the curiosities you’ll find in Smith’s office. And then there are the rabbit figurines in all shapes and sizes, the result of a joke, which got out of hand, about how they were his lucky charm. “Every week I get rabbits of all kinds,” writes Smith. “They’re everywhere. Rabbits made of bronze, felt, plastic, wood, stone. A man in Italy sends me four or five a month, even though I’ve never met him.”

5. David Bowie hated small talk

Bowie became a big fan of Smith’s two-piece suits, including one in a lemon and pink overcheck. After turning up to the store unannounced several times to shop, Smith invited him for a cup of tea in his studio. It was the beginning of a friendship. Bowie never called Smith by his first name – instead, it was always Smithy. “Was he an easy person to be with and to talk to? Only if you were interesting,” writes Smith. “There was no small talk.”

6. He accidentally created Instabait

Even if you’ve never been to LA, you’ll probably recognise Smith’s Melrose Avenue store. Five years after it opened in 2005, Instagram launched and the store’s hot-pink wall became a selfie sensation. There have been thousands of snaps taken at the #pinkwall, making it one of the most Instagrammed buildings in California.

7. He’s not keen on comparisons to Ralph Lauren Smith describes getting “pissed off” in his early days when the press kept comparing him to the American designer, and renowned anglophile, Ralph Lauren. “I’ve got far more of a sense of humour, for a start,” he writes. “His shops were always so serious, with the stately-home image and the good-looking models. There was nobody that English in England.”

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8. He collaborated with Pope Francis (sort of)

As a huge cycling enthusiast (he hoped to become a pro until he had a nasty accident aged 17), Smith was thrilled to be asked to design the leaders’ jerseys for the annual Giro d’Italia bike race in 201. It included the “maglia rosa”, a pink jersey that is (sort of) equivalent to the Tour de France’s yellow jersey. Smith added some red piping around the edge, signature striping on the left sleeve and a tiny sketch of a cyclist. It was sent to Pope Francis to be blessed. Smith writes: “I’ve done a lot of collaborations over the years, from cars to crayons, from carpets to cycles, but only one of them, so far as I’m aware, has been personally blessed by the pope.”

9. Despite all his success, he remains a doerCase in point, during lockdown Smith continued to work from his office, albeit alone. One day he was met by an unpleasant smell and discovered that 18 containers of forgotten milk had exploded all over the kitchen floor. He spent three hours cleaning it up. At one stage he found himself thinking: “I wonder if my friend Giorgio Armani is doing something like this now?” Still, when Smith told colleagues about his wiping marathon, “they all said the same thing: ‘Oh no! Only Paul Smith.’ And I took that as a compliment.”

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