PAUL SMITH | From Looking Closely to Fragrance for the Body and the Home

The familiar with an element of the unexpected.

— Paul Smith

A restrained jacket can conceal a vivid lining. A similar approach runs through Paul Smith’s fragrances: start with something familiar, then see it from another angle. A rose given by his wife, tea encountered on his travels and books piled in his office have all provided specific starting points.

The business began with a small Nottingham shop in 1970. Its subsequent journey into perfume and home fragrance reveals a designer who turns close attention to everyday experience into choices about what to make.

Contents

Basic information
The founder and the origins of the brand
The brand’s approach to making fragrance
References

Basic information

Brand founded: 1970
Founder: Paul Smith
Place of origin: Nottingham, England
First perfumes launched: 2000
Home fragrance collection introduced: 2022
Official websites: Paul Smith / Paul Smith Japan

The founder and the origins of the brand

From cycle racing to art and clothing

Born in 1946, Paul grew up in Nottingham. His father Harold, an amateur photographer, gave him a camera and built an attic darkroom. Film cost pocket money, so each exposure mattered. Photography taught Paul to consider what belonged in the frame.

His ambition was nevertheless to become a racing cyclist. He left school at 15 to work in a clothing warehouse, but cycling remained his main interest. A serious accident at 17 changed his direction.

After hospital, two fellow patients invited him to Nottingham’s Bell Inn. Art students gathered there, talking about the Bauhaus and Andy Warhol. New friendships drew him towards art and fashion and eventually into helping one of the students run a shop.

Pauline and a practical education in tailoring

At 21, Paul met Pauline Denyer, his future wife and an essential collaborator. Trained in fashion at the Royal College of Art, she taught him about construction and proportion, from the positioning of pockets to the structure of a jacket.

He also attended evening classes in pattern cutting and sewing. Alterations meant dismantling suits and putting them together again; when he could not find someone to make shirts he had sold, he sewed them himself.

For 10 years I supported myself by doing alterations for money.

— Paul Smith

Practical work taught him how clothes were constructed and how to sustain a livelihood.

A small shop in 1970 and a first Paris order

In 1970, Paul opened on Byard Lane in Nottingham. The windowless room measured just three metres by three. Initially, it traded only on Fridays and Saturdays; window dressing, tailoring and other work supported the venture during the rest of the week.

Objects and art posters helped customers feel comfortable in the small space by giving them something to discuss. His interests and the conversations they prompted became part of the shop alongside the clothes.

In 1976, his first Paris showroom was a hotel bedroom: shirts went on the bed and jackets on the wardrobe door. After several days without a customer, an appointment on the final day brought an order.

The first perfumes in 2000 and a birthday rose

Perfume followed some thirty years after the shop. Paul Smith signed a licensing agreement with Interparfums in December 1998, and men’s and women’s fragrances launched in 2000. The founding of the fashion business and its entry into perfume are distinct milestones.

At a Paris laboratory, questions about early memories led him to his mother’s furniture polish, rain and freshly cut grass from cycling.

Paul Smith Rose, launched in 2007, also began close to home. Pauline, a keen gardener, arranged for a rose bearing her husband’s name as a birthday gift. Paul chose its scent as the starting point for a perfume.

We’ve gone for a traditional scent with a twist of modernity.

— Paul Smith

Perfumer Antoine Maisondieu used ScentTrek technology to capture the flower’s scent, combining it with Turkish rose oil and green tea among other materials. A familiar floral theme became an opportunity to give the rose a contemporary expression.

Portrait began with a conversation about photographs

Portrait, introduced in 2013, grew from a chance conversation with perfumer Barnabé Fillion, who had also modelled in Paul’s shows and advertising. Discussing Paul’s photographs and travels led to the idea of fragrances based on places he had visited.

Darjeeling in India and experiences in Japan entered their conversations, as did Indian black tea and Japanese green tea. Photographing places, talking about them and making fragrance became connected through the collaboration.

The Interparfums licence expired at the end of 2021 without renewal. In 2022, a candle and diffuser collection appeared under a United Perfumes licence, adding another partnership and another field of fragrance to the brand’s history.

The brand’s approach to making fragrance

Translating the comfort of tailoring into scent

Paul wanted fragrance to fit easily into daily life while retaining a small surprise. For Essential, launched in 2015, the reference was the comfortable tailoring central to his clothing.

It’s uncomplicated, as comfortable as a classic suit.

— Paul Smith

Its rosemary also reminded him of his garden and an Italian pasta dish. He connected scent to sensations he knew well.

Fanny Bal and Dominique Ropion created Hello You in 2018. Bal began with a strong vetiver accord, a blend centred on vetiver, then added citrus, spices and lighter apple and lavender touches. She wanted to suggest British tradition with a playful detail evoking the Paul Smith stripes.

Turning shops and working spaces into home fragrance

IFF perfumers Céline Barel and Meabh McCurtin created the 2022 home collection’s first four scents: Botanist, Bookworm, Early Bird and Daydreamer.

Botanist takes crisp tailoring in Paul’s first shop as its starting point, moving into fresh greenery through vetiver, moss and lemon. Bookworm draws on office stacks of books and papers, using materials including cedarwood to evoke libraries and warm amber. Each translates an impression of a place into scent.

Early Bird evokes wet pavements and cloudy mornings; Daydreamer suggests herb gardens and cycling through sunlit fields. Everyday life and holidays provide different settings. The collection’s connection lies in Paul’s experiences, rather than a shared list of notes.

Two-tone glass designed to remain in use

The home collection gave the containers a creative role alongside the fragrances. Contrasting glass colours interact with light, and the vessels were designed to remain useful as vases or jars once their original contents were finished.

I hope they will become keepsakes in their own right

— Paul Smith

Lids double as coasters, while the outer boxes use a zipper-like opening. Colour and practical details extend the design beyond the period when the fragrance itself is being used.