Meeting Paul Smith is quite an experience. Britain’s most recognisable fashion designer bounces into his office in Covent Garden, all windswept grey hair and bundles of energy. Surrounded by towering piles of books and a mishmash of items including rabbit figurines and painted suitcases, he produces a glass of sparkling mineral water with a cheerful, ‘Here’s your gin and tonic.’ Such are the ways of one of the fashion industry’s most in-demand designers, knighted in 2000 by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Contradicting any notion that fashion folks are unpleasant and pompous by default, ‘Sir Paul’ is the personification of generosity and warmth.

Smith has been in the business for more than three decades, still heads the company as designer and chairman, and his eponymous label encompasses 12 different lines across womenswear, menswear, childrenswear, watches, footwear, fragrance and eyewear. Putting a spin on products well beyond his own offerings, Smith also regularly collaborates with companies ranging from Mini Cooper and Triumph motorbikes to the furniture house Cappellini and Mercian Cycles.

The designer’s passion for individuality is reflected in the Paul Smith shops in destinations such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Toronto, Dubai, London and Antwerp, all of which look completely different. Beside the Paul Smith branded shops, the designer also operates a curiosity shop in London’s Mayfair which he established partly to nurture his avid interest in collecting art, antique furniture and other items that catch his eye.

Refreshingly, Smith’s entry into the fashion world doesn’t read like the stories of most designers. He never made clothes for dolls at the age of three, and didn’t pore over issues of Vogue while his classmates played football. Instead, his boyhood dream was to become a professional cyclist. Sadly, or perhaps luckily, depending on how you look at it, a serious cycling accident put a halt to 17-year-old Smith’s biking career. It was in hospital that his future as a fashion designer started to bud, albeit in an abstract way. ‘After the bike crash, I was hospitalised for six months and in that time I met a lot of interesting fellow patients, many of whom were part of the creative industries and worked with graphic design, architecture or fashion. This world began to fascinate me and I found myself drawn into it more and more.’

Emerging from hospital, Smith soon found himself helping a friend to set up a fashion shop. Despite having no experience, Smith embraced the challenge wholeheartedly, and went on to run the shop at weekends as well as acting as interior decorator, window dresser and menswear buyer. Before long, he started dabbling in fashion design himself with the help of his talented designer girlfriend, and now wife, Pauline. ‘Pauline taught me everything about clothes making, including pattern cutting and the understanding of cut, shape, and proportion,’ Smith says. ‘She was my education, so I didn’t have to go to school. Eventually she suggested that I open my own shop in Nottingham and so I did, financing the business by doing little jobs like working as a fashion sales agent.’ In 1976, Smith showed his first menswear collection under his own name in Paris.

Looking at Smith’s past, it’s easy to see where his hands-on approach and multi-tasking abilities of today derive from. ‘Since I was involved in every aspect of running a fashion business, I became quite rounded, something that has definitely helped me to build my company,’ he says. ‘There are a lot of talented designers around, but many fall by the wayside as the practicalities of running a business sometimes fail them. To succeed in the fashion business, talent alone is often not enough. I often state that I’m OK at design and OK at business, and I’m not saying that to be modest; it’s the reality.’

For a designer who is just ‘OK’ at his job, Smith has managed to carve quite a niche for himself. The label’s menswear collections are particularly coveted and are endorsed by cult figures such as David Bowie and the members of the Rolling Stones. To sum up the Paul Smith signature, one only has to cast a glance at what the designer himself wears. On this occasion he is clad in a black jacket over a baby-blue striped shirt teamed with a pair of speckled black woollen trousers. Multicoloured cashmere socks peek out between the trouser hem and the purple Dr Martens boots. The look is classic and grounded, but definitely not boring. A little like the man himself.