Paul Smith No. 9 collection

No. 9, the leather collection inspired by the façade of Paul Smith’s Mayfair shop at No. 9, Albemarle Street, London, has evolved with new styles and colours for autumn/winter 2016.

The shop facade reinterprets the design language of the eighteenthcentury Georgian townhouse beneath.

The repeating elliptical motif of interlocking circles, rendered in cast iron, nods to ornamental Regency forms, creating a delicate, modernist pattern from a subversively heavyweight material. The cast-iron frontage firmly locates No. 9, Albemarle Street within its Mayfair surroundings, mirroring the area’s characteristic street furniture of iron railings, grates, balconies and lampposts.

For the leather goods collection, embossed leather replaces cast iron. The traditional craft of leather production and embossing results in leather accessories that capture the same uniquely British amalgam of heavy industry and handcrafted construction.

Autumn/winter 2016 sees the No. 9 collection extended to include new colours and bags for both men and women.

For women, a clutch is added featuring a brushed metal buckle identical to that on a Paul Smith briefcase taken from the archive, the side pleats of the clutch feature unexpected ashes of colour, a hallmark of Paul Smith designs.