Paul Smith opens up ‘Bar Paul’ for his return to Pitti Uomo after 31 years

After 31 years, Paul Smith made his return to Florence menswear fair Pitti Uomo yesterday evening (11 June 2024), opening up the for-one-night-only ‘Bar Paul’ in Giuseppe Poggi’s Villa Favard, where espresso and spritzes were served on the riverside mansion’s sprawling lawns.

The occasion was the presentation of Smith’s S/S 2025 collection, marking a departure from his usual runway shows in Paris. Leading patrons through Bar Paul – which came complete with branded matchboxes, napkins and sugar packets – the designer hosted an intimate presentation in one of the villa’s salons, talking personally through each of the collection’s looks.

Bar Paul: Paul Smith hosts his S/S 2025 menswear collection at Pitti Uomo

It was, he said, a riposte to the increasing number of big-budget, around-the-world runway shows hosted by fashion’s major players. ‘I think the world’s gone a bit mad with these shows everywhere around the world,’ he said, presiding over a room of gathered guests and press. ’I just think it’s so lacking in personality. So I thought, why don’t I just talk to everyone and show the collection?’

The collection began, Smith said, with the establishment of an official archive in his home town of Nottingham, a project he has been working on for the past three years. Now numbering 4,600 pieces of clothing, he said the project had taken him back to being an 18-year-old and discovering London’s Soho.

‘The main thing we'd go for were the clubs – there was great music, a lot of jazz,’ he said. ‘And there were also these Italian coffee bars which had been founded in the 1940s. There was something called espresso – before then we’d been living on Nescafé.’

These coffee bars, and their famous patrons – including artists like Lucian Freud – inspired the collection’s easy, eclectic mood, where double-breasted blazers might be worn with flower-emblazoned jeans (a collaboration with Lee denim was introduced), or the loose, draped line of a pullover shirt inspired by an artist’s smock.

‘Many of the artists of the time, like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon were living in the area and used to hang out in these bars,’ Smith said. ’A lot of these outfits are really based on how these artists dressed.’

It spoke to what Smith noted was a growing mood among shoppers, to purchase pieces which ‘add to their existing wardrobe’ rather than buying the traditional suit, shirt and tie at once. One specific inspiration was the way that Freud would wear his father’s bespoke wool suit jackets with a pair of paint-covered jeans.

The presentation finished with a warm round of applause for Smith, who remains one of menswear’s most respected names. Afterwards, guests spilled back out onto the villa’s lawns, where they were served an aperitivo in the golden evening light.

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See more of what to expect from Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025