Eccentric British fashion designer Paul Smith is currently presiding over a rollout of stores across the globe. Following on from the December 2005 opening of a bubblegum-pink store on Melrose Avenue, L.A., last week he was in Tokyo to unveil a four-story flagship in the Aoyama district. Later this year he will oversee the launch of stores in New York's SoHo and Paris' Saint Faubourg.
While other big brands like to keep the interiors of their emporiums as consistent as possible, Smith prefers to tailor each one to its surroundings. The Melrose Avenue location is divided into movie-style sets like a studio lot; a new outlet for his R. Newbold line in Osaka retains the original interior of the Japanese shrine-maker that once occupied the building; an 18th-century town house in the designer's native Nottingham retains many of its period features, despite having been turned into a retail space.
The new Aoyama store, which opened March 10, is also themed around its original function. Its glass and steel shell once served as part of the Idee interior retail chain run by Teruo Kurosaki, godfather of the Tokyo design scene and initiator of the Tokyo Designers Block event. "I've known and admired Kurosaki-san for years, since I first started coming to Japan," explains the tall, silver-haired designer, who is soon to turn 60. "When I heard that he was letting this building go, I said 'I've got to try and get this building to try and keep up the spirit of what he was doing.' So it's a kind of homage to his spirit and energy."