paul smith lounge stockholm

paul smith lounge stockholmimage © designboom

british fashion designer and stockholm furniture fair guest of honor 2010, paul smith created a lounge, composed of 4 rooms, filled with personal sources of inspiration and impressions. one room shows ‘sent things’, random items sent to paul smith by a secret admirer over the past years (designboom featured this space in one of our previous articles). another room is covered entirely with photos of flowers, taken by paul smith, and ‘adapted’ to dress chairs, sofas, teacups.

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‘I want to spread an interesting, optimistic atmosphere that inspires people and shows something other than pure elegance. I made an area which is divided into sections which is just, I hope, very intriguing for people.‘ paul smith to designboom.

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‘one section is full of flowers, photographs of flowers I’ve taken on my various trips around the world. to remind us about the importance of nature and how much inspiration we can get by observing how beautiful nature is designed (whoever designed it).’ paul smith

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‘it looks very pretty and it’s very optimistic’. paul smith

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image © designboom

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image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

image © designboom

another room is full of pictures of paul smith’s iconic boutiques and famous ‘corporate stripes’ – plus a selection of the goods he sells in these shops, from shoes to toys…  

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‘there is another area which shows all my shops. I’m passionate about individuality, so there is lots of attention to detail. the photographs are showing that every shop is different and got its own character. I think this is really important in today’s world where everything is so similar, so standardized, and easily available everywhere. hopefully people think that it’s an interesting approach to retail.’ paul smith to designboom

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image © designboom

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upholstery textile for maharam. paul smith also designed a collection of patterns for rugs of swedish company bolon’s woven vinyl flooring.

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image © designboom

the multi-colored stripes decorate his namesake shopping bags, he has applied them to socks, pumps, handbags, fine china… he even customized a mini cooper with them. they have become his fingerprint.

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image © designboom

image © designboom

the fourth room is dedicated to one of his biggest sources of inspiration, the italian architect and designer giò ponti, who was also founder and artistic director of ‘domus magazine’. the room is featuring covers of the magazine as well as a handwritten letter by gio ponti to the director of the denver art museum, otto bach and his wife cile miller bach, in 1970.

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‘this section is dedicated to gio ponti, a brilliant man. he was an architect and interior designer, he designed a car, furniture, teapots he wrote design critic and could  tell the difference between art and crap. he tried to avoid the elitism and more-artistic-than-thou attitude which has effectively kept the creation of art solely in the hands of ‘artists’. he worked with fornasetti, (…)’ paul smith to designboom

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‘I show quite a lot of the old covers of domus magazines’ says paul smith, ‘gio ponti was the editor -in-chief of domus magazine, the italian architecture and design magazine, for many years. I think 50 years, very long time.’

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a letter by gio ponti to the director of the denver art museum, otto bach and his wife cile miller bach, 1970 image © designboom

‘I love the way gio ponti has taken the time to turn this letter into something happy and optimistic regardless of its contents!’ paul smith told designboom.

how does paul smith find his inspiration?  yesterday, at the stockholm furniture fair, you could hear him tell his story in his talk entitled ‘I like things’. smith described how he started his career, how he works and how he (and all of us) can find inspiration in everything.