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| Welcome to my dream house among the trees |
The Paul Smith Space
One of the great things about fashion is its ability to project us onto a fantastical platform of invention and imagination.
Since my days of roaming as a mall rat teenager in the halls of Emporium in Bangkok, I used to gape at Paul Smith's window displays so incredibly enthralled by all its trinkets and treasures and at the phantasmogorium of color that he does ever so well.
I recently had the chance to visit the mother store in Nottingham, where he is originally from. Unfortunately, both as a result of my ineptitude and my general distraction with the beautiful house, I completely forgot to open the shutters of my camera to his world of wonder.
Thankfully, having heard of the Paul Smith Space in Tokyo and even more blissfully, having encountered it at a whim with a friend on a walk searching for another establishment, I had my camera with me and all the good sense to open its lens to my memory card.
What a well executed little space, with its glass walls and surrounding bamboo trees, you really feel as though you've been invited into the intimate home of Paul Smith himself. This kind of marketing is the smartest of all, because you feel privileged to enter this kind of space, as though you and you alone have merited the chance to open your eyes to its creative candy; from the framed images of what would alone seem banal, to the carefully designed building that hides all sorts of private rooms, the antique suits and the one-off pieces, the 70's vinyl lying around, the gadget designs like the lego speakers, type-writer teapots, the warm wooden floors, the ridiculously well-dressed staff (who seem more like accessories to the store rather than real people with flaws), and the top floor exhibition space; this place makes the eyes want to lick ice-cream (metaphorically speaking, of course).
The Paul Smith house is a seamless fusing of the personal with the commercial, in that all the objects and paraphernalia are made to feel as though they were already yours, but the only thing for sale alas, is the clothing that accompanies it. The clean gallery space on the final floor, with its exposition of a French/Londonian love affair which unfolds in photographic prints (and is also presented as a video slide coupled with a classical soundtrack that begs for our empathy) pulls at the heart strings and imagination of even the most removed. Without having displayed the images here, imagine the quintessential European woman with her short cropped do, a tall brunette (whose hair consequently flips to a neo-punk, a la Englaise, fashionable bleach-blonde boy-cut) atop a bicycle cycling through the street of London next to fruit vendors and markets, and through les rues de Paris. She is not so beautiful that you cannot find a point of reference for yourself but despite the slight imperfection of her jaw, and in part because of the magnificent story and the ridiculously attractive men she does indeed attract, you cannot help but want to be her. In all this beauty of well-framed shots and romanticised imagery, she is kindly dressed by Paul Smith himself (the wardrobe looks sensational, all of which seem to match the season being sold downstairs) and so you feel that a small part of this story can be transfered into the realm of reality through the purchase of that de-constructed wool jacket, or perhaps those cute little socks she adorns with the heels when she is walking through the misty vineyards in the South of France. In fact, her hair is so cute I may have to have it cut exactly the same way, with a fringe a little bit longer perhaps, but essentially in the same style. Why don't I just indulge and buy a whole new wardrobe, so that I too will experience the tragedy and the passion that these photos so seductively capture.
If only my bank account agreed with me too.
Regardless of my financial situation, if you or anyone around you actually had the money (or even if you didn't but that credit card tickled you through the wallet), you would have to be the least-consumerist newt alive to refrain from purchasing anything in this magnificent playground.
Dear Paul Smith space, be mine.
