Paul Smith menswear: classic with a twist, since 1970

Who Paul Smith is

Paul Smith opened his first shop, Paul Smith Vetements Pour Homme, in Nottingham in 1970. It was three metres by three metres. He showed his first menswear collection in Paris in 1976, and the company has grown to 130 shops in more than 60 countries while remaining headquartered in Nottingham, which is unusual and worth saying out loud.

What the brand is known for is classic British clothing with colour where you do not expect it. A sober navy jacket with a floral lining. A plain grey sock with a stripe at the toe.

The Signature Stripe

The stripe is made up of 40 different colours. It came out of experiments with coloured threads going back to the Nottingham shop in the 1970s, where the studio built stripes by winding yarn around a piece of card by hand, because, as the brand puts it, colour is three dimensional and winding it by hand lets you see the colours at their most vivid.

It turns up as tipping on a polo collar, as the lining of a leather wallet made in Italy, or knitted as intarsia into a merino sweater. A good part of our Paul Smith range carries it.

What we stock

Our menswear range leans towards the pieces people buy Paul Smith for repeatedly: socks, including multipacks, underwear, belts, wallets and billfolds, scarves and hats. Beyond that there is knitwear, t shirts, shirts, trousers, tailoring and blazers, jackets and some footwear.

A good proportion of the range is currently reduced, in some cases by half.

How Paul Smith sizes, and why it confuses people

Paul Smith uses continental European numeric sizing on tailoring, running roughly ten points above your chest in inches. A 40 inch chest is a Paul Smith 50, a 38 is a 48, a 42 is a 52. Shirts are sized by collar in centimetres, so 39 to 40 rather than 15 and a half. If you have ever stood in front of a Paul Smith rail doing mental arithmetic, that is why.

On whether it runs large or small, the honest answer is that it depends which line you are in. Mainline tailoring is cut slim, particularly slim fit blazers and shirts, and people who are between sizes generally do better going up. Casualwear, knitwear and footwear are closer to true to size. The PS Paul Smith diffusion line is cut to a regular fit and is true to size, which means a mainline 50 and a PS 50 do not necessarily wear the same. Nobody on the web explains that, which is why we are.

Repairs, and what it means from Belfast

Paul Smith runs a Repair, Restore, Refresh service covering everything from a snag or a shoe resole through to relining a suit. Repairs on faulty products are complimentary within two years of purchase, and anything else is quoted case by case. The catch is that it operates through Paul Smith's own UK shops, excluding concessions, outlets and airports, and there is no Paul Smith shop in Northern Ireland. Talk to us first if you need something sorted.

On sustainability, Paul Smith publishes goals rather than achievements, and we will treat them as such. Its stated aims include making PS Paul Smith a 100% Sun Logo collection, using only organic or recycled cotton verified against GOTS and Textile Exchange standards, using only recycled synthetic fibres, and sourcing all leather from LWG, I.CE.I or ISO 14001 certified suppliers. It states it does not test on animals and does not accept components that have been tested on animals.