The Paul Smith Archive: Sugar Cubes and Hundreds of Rabbits

A visit to Paul Smith’s studio and a train trip to Nottingham the next day: for the first time, the complete archive in its catalog is presented to the public

Paul Smith: On the Train to Nottingham for a Visit to the Archive

A visit to the London office in May 2024. The next day, an English spring Tuesday, we take the train from London to Nottingham at dawn. Every morning, Paul Smith wakes up between four and five to go to the pool before starting his day. During our trip to Nottingham tomorrow, we will photograph some historical pieces from the house, which have just been cataloged, researched, and composed.

Paul Smith: Nottingham from Operational Headquarters to Archive Headquarters – Rabbits Along the Train Tracks

22 years ago, Paul Smith traveled the same route by train from London to Nottingham with a journalist who wasn’t me. Aside from being the home of Paul Smith’s historical archive, Nottingham was the English house’s operational hub. It was 1992. The trip back then was also an interview. Lost in thought, looking at the countryside outside the window, Paul Smith told the journalist that if he saw a rabbit in the countryside along the tracks, it would be a sign of good luck. The journalist reported this phrase – and from the day the article was published, Paul Smith began receiving rabbits as gifts. More and more rabbits came from all over the world because as he received them, Paul displayed them – in his stores, in photos capturing him during visits. Even today, and certainly tomorrow, Paul Smith receives rabbits by mail from people around the world. “If I had told that journalist ‘diamonds,’ it would have been better.”

A Letter to the Nottingham Address: Mr. Wilson Would Like to Buy a Piece from the Warehouse

A letter dated December 14, 2009, was addressed to him, to Paul Smith, at the Nottingham address. The sender is Mr. Wilson – who explains that he bought a delightful pair of shoes a few weeks earlier and stored them with his other shoes. He kept them out of reach and sight of his dog Harper, a rough-haired Slovak pointer. Mr. Wilson reluctantly noted that Harper had become tenaciously obsessed with the very shoes purchased from Paul Smith – that he had opened doors and cabinets with his furry paws. Harper, the pointer, knocked down boxes and overturned shelves to find these shoes, choosing the right one and chewing it into mush. Mr. Wilson asks Sir Paul Smith for the courtesy of buying just the lost shoe from the warehouse to avoid waste and pay less than to buy the complete pair again. Mr. Wilson’s envelope accompanies a package containing the shoe destroyed by Harper’s teeth, delivered and returned – suggesting that the damaged shoe might be useful for an advertising campaign, proposing the slogan: “boots so good even dogs adore them.”

An Archive Made Up of Stories, Tales, and Anecdotes – The Lightness of a Rabbit

More stories, more tales – because an archive consists of a world of fantasies, anecdotes, and riddles – not just catalog items with well-organized labels. One afternoon in London, the Prince of Wales was expected to visit the office. Signage was placed throughout the building – “Music Off For Prince,” the sign read – but when Charles arrived, no one remembered to lower the volume. Another note is signed by Bruce Weber: the photographer explains how, if he had had the right body, he would have bought all the merchandise in Paul Smith’s store – but since he didn’t have that body, he only bought almost everything. Framed a little further along, a newspaper article highlights Eric Clapton’s taste, measure, and balance, promoting the guitarist’s dates at London’s Albert Hall – the reviewer adds that if Paul Smith ever wrote a guitar solo, it would result in a piece for Eric Clapton.

References and quick cultural connections – I always say that the only book that can omit irony is the Gospel. Throughout his career, Paul Smith has used the light lens gifted to him by a white rabbit. Nonsense doesn’t exist; reason doesn’t apply – Alice might respond. The hundreds of rabbits – miniatures, stuffed animals, Japanese ceramics, toys: this is not a collection but an invasion. As if Cupid, the angelic son of Apollo with an arrow that strikes the heart, transformed into a rabbit. Before we know it, even all of us have become rabbits.

The London Studio: The Matrix of the Nottingham Archive

We’re in Paul Smith’s studio: layers of objects scattered everywhere. The matrix of every archive in Nottingham is the studio in London. This is because here are collected the ideas, notes, and sketches that nourished the man’s creativity before that of the designer. On the windowsills, on the shelves, on the bookcases in front of the books, above the books, and above even more books. Hanging on picture frames, some hung, others placed on others, and others. At the back, opposite the main window, “Somewhere there is a desk,” says Paul Smith, dismissing the corner with a wave of his hand.

Miroslav Tichy: A Book, A Camera for an Observer

Miroslav Tichy photographed women using cameras he built himself. Cameras made from cardboard tubes, bottle caps, and cans. When encountering him on the street, no one believed Tichy was a photographer because no one could imagine that those parodies of cameras could really capture an image. (The only rabbits believed). Tichy led a life of isolation in a Czechoslovakian village – he began as a painter after studying at the Prague Academy. He stopped painting to secretly photograph the women of his village, using cameras made from discarded trash. These are images with a slight blur, and on some of them, Vichy added color pigments. I randomly opened a page of a book on Miroslav Tichy: “I never did anything but pass the time. I would go to the city and had to come up with something to do. I used three rolls of film a day, and took a hundred photos a day. I was just an observer, but I was a good one.” Paul Smith secretly smiles as if there was a magic trick or illusion, and I couldn’t have opened a different page.

Hundreds of Rabbits, Books, Bicycles, Frames, the Density of Impulses, and Peter Schlesinger’s Book

Besides the hundreds of rabbits, there are hundreds and hundreds of books – along with bicycles, records, lamps, frames. The density of impulses for fantasy resembles a vegetable soup and ambrosia for the child empress of Michael Ende at the table with Zeus, father of lightning and thunder. Peter Schlesinger’s photographic diary, David Hockney’s companion and the subject of some of Hockney’s paintings, set against the backdrop of a swimming pool. Peter emerges from the chlorinated water with bare buttocks. In this book, Peter Schlesinger, between 1968 and 1989, collects pastel colors of sunlit images that become strokes of purple, yellow, and blue on analog film. Fran Lebowitz is young and holding the poster for her new book. Paloma Picasso checks her lipstick on her wedding day. Scenes of life between California and London.

The Duke of Devonshire, the Library at Chatsworth: A Counterpoint to Every Archive

The 11th Duke of Devonshire naps in the library, dozing on the red couch of Chatsworth House. The cushion is flattened, feathers escaping. The Duke is surrounded by newspapers, paintings, and books everywhere – stuccos, decorated woods, and wallpapers – the library at Chatsworth is a counterpoint to every archive in the world and to this studio where I find myself. The image is by Christopher Sykes, taken in 1995. The 11th Duke was Andrew Cavendish, who sat in Parliament among the Tories, served in government when Harold Macmillan was prime minister – and married Deborah, one of the four Mitford sisters.

Letters to Paul Smith: Fruit Stickers, Peter Beard, the Dalai Lama, and John Galliano, Bruce Weber’s Books

The letters people send to Paul Smith: one of them was embroidered on fabric instead of written on paper. A notebook was delivered by mail with dozens of fruit stickers stuck inside: bananas, peaches, apples, etc. – stickers from producers, stores, and supermarkets – on the first page, handwritten, “Label Thief.” Under glass is the most famous photo by Peter Beard: a man writing in the sun, his legs inside the mouth of a crocodile, and the blood used to color the background (it’s unknown if the blood Peter Beard used was his or that of an animal hunted on his estate in East Africa). A poster by Calder printed by Maeght Editions.

On cardboard sheets, hundreds of buttons are pinned. In a tin box, thousands of stamps, held together by ties like tiny bundles of sheets, documents bound together. In another box, a collection of sugar cubes. Yet another box for matches, one for Swiss Army knives. From Japan, a miniature reproduction of this studio where we are. The Dalai Lama is an unexpected client. A photograph of John Galliano on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue dressed in a Paul Smith suit.

Bruce Weber’s first book was presented in Paul Smith’s shop in Covent Garden. In the beginning, Paul Smith designed clothes only for men – Bruce Weber wanted to photograph the models of those years in men’s clothing. The form and fashion of Paul Smith, the male tailoring cut with that touch of nonchalance worked on the woman’s body, producing volumes that the photographer had in mind. “If you hit anything, call it the target.”

Paul Smith – The Difference Between an Archive and a Collection

When does a collection turn into an archive? What’s the difference between a collection and an archive when both are engines running and never closed rooms? A greeting card from Jane Birkin; an autograph sketch by Yves Saint Laurent. A photograph by Edgar Degas from 1895 is placed on the ground behind a bicycle wheel, just like a portrait of Charlotte Rampling. Paul Smith picks up a folder with graphics by Sister Corita – Catholic phrases used as advertising slogans, as political posters against the Vietnam War, so much so that she risked excommunication by the bishop on charges of communism. A rainbow painted by Corita Kent on the Boston gas tank is today the largest copyrighted artwork – returning to the city on a Sunday evening from a day trip, parents teach their children how to recognize the profile of Ho Chi Minh, barely subliminal in the green paint, like any white rabbit on a lawn.

Carlo Mazzoni