All Mix Blog

Last night M&I had the pleasure of attending a discussion between Sir Paul Smith and Mr Colin McDowell at Selfridges department store, London. Over a fascinating 74 minutes the gentlemen discussed Sir Paul's childhood, his father's humour, his (brilliant) lack of 'business model' and the importance of being genuine. The highlight for us came in the Q&A afterwards though. We asked Sir Paul to expand on his recently reported lament on the decline in craftsmanship in the UK and whether his eponymous company was doing anything to help the situation. Here is what he had to say: 'Masses of British manufacturers have fallen by the wayside, many in the 1970s, during the period that the government and many people were thinking that the new way was to do with the service industries; to do with the computer, the mass produced, robotic way. So a lot of the mills just didn't have the money to reinvest because there wasn't the tax incentives to do so. Also, un...

Nice interview with Sir Paul Smith by Simon Usborne in The Independent on Monday. Here's a small extract: "I look at this bike (a Mercian) and see something that was handmade in England by a small business," Smith says. "And that's something I mourn – the fact that there are now so few small companies like that. I worry about the pressure young people feel to earn a certain amount of money or to achieve a certain status. To be a stonemason and only to carve as much stone as your hands can manage isn't attractive anymore." Image of early 1980s Mercian catalogue cover from Chris 531 on Flickr