Hello my name is Paul Smith

This weekend I visited the newly opened Paul Smith exhibition at the Design Museum, London, and I loved it!

Paul is an avid collector, like myself, and his inspiration for his collections come from the objects around him, and the photographs he takes along the way.

I feel so inspired, everything he says in the exhibition just makes so much sense to me, listening to his monologue:

"Don't spend too much time looking at what other people do...try to be your own person"

"Unfortunately a lot of people look but they don't see - so that means absorb when you look at things, it could be graffiti on a wall, it could be an interesting pocket of a postman's trouser, it could be the shadows on a wall, it could be anything"

"I take my camera everywhere, its like a diary - visual diary"

"I travel a lot, and I always observe the way local people dress"

"I love to go out to Portabello road or because I've travelled quite a lot I go to antique markets around the world, and there you can find lots of inspiration"

"Printing the unexpected onto a fabric always is my handwriting. A flower on a fabric on a fabric a photograph that I have taken printed onto a fabric, shadows, I've always loved shadows…venetian blinds with shadows from them, shadows of trees, shadows of people, the shadow of a bicycle"

"Shape and simplicity, proportion are all ingredients that are essential for design today"

"You can look at a beach hut, see the three colours and that can turn into a piece of knitwear"

Sources & further reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/sharpened-lead/2013/nov/20/paul-smith-exhibition-design-museum

http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2013/paul-smith

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/11/paul-smith-says-you-need-a-head-that-can-change-hats-every-hour.html