Sir Paul Smith – fashion legend, and trackstanding racing cyclist

By dint of regularly going shopping with @adriana872 I recently acquired a Paul Smith suit-jacket and waistcoat at a very reasonable price, from (I shall call it) a “boutique” store in South Ken; the lady behind the counter filled-in my utter lack of knowledge saying that Paul Smith is “a very lovely man”, and that “when he dies [I] don’t know what the British fashion industry will do, but the jacket will probably go up in value by quite a bit” and that I was buying a “collector’s piece”.

I have since also been educated in the matter of distictive stripes and colour in Paul Smith’s designs.

What I’ll bet that neither of them know is that he is also a racing-cycle fiend who does hands-free trackstands:

…that he designed a couple of bikes for Mercian because “Paul Smith fell into fashion aged 17 after a cycling accident put an end to his hopes of becoming a professional racing cyclist. He proudly rode his Mercian bike through the Derby countryside and still has the bike today. ”

The bikes aren’t my sort of thing, but they’re lovely… and at least one person I know will be happy that they are Campag throughout.

Comments

5 responses to “Sir Paul Smith – fashion legend, and trackstanding racing cyclist”

  1. C3

    amd he did my favorite Christmas gift for a few people in my life- a t-shirt from Next of a rabbit staring at the sky. Lovely. By chance, David Tennant wore one on BBC Breakfast News on New Year’s Eve discussing his departure from Dr Who.
    Very attractive and very attractive price point.

    You don’t know what you’ve been missing.

  2. Wow.

    Two people who appreciate a Campagnolo equipped bike. What was he thinking with the brakes though!*

    * Probably needed the long reach for mudguards

  3. What a nice man 🙂

    C3 – where can I get one of these rabbit t-shirts? I don’t see them on the Next website ….

    Lisa.

  4. Mike Smith

    I, too, appreciate Campag-equipped bikes in the way that I can appreciate any fine piece of engineering. I’ve never had the budget and the requirement for Campag to be my best solution, but it’s nice to dream. I did build up a semi-Campag bike in the mid-80s

  5. C3

    They were ins shops pre-Christmas and must have gone in the Boxing Day sales. Good luck next time.

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