Introducing Angles, the eighteenth woven textile designed by Paul Smith in collaboration with the Maharam Design Studio.
A departure from Smith’s signature stripes, Angles offers a modern, enigmatic take on traditional jacquard through bold geometry, refined texture, and masterful deployment of color. Based on a triangularly shaped and printed silk scarf designed by Paul Smith for his Autumn/Winter 2015 menswear collection, Angles was interpreted by the Maharam Design Studio using careful pattern analysis to render its artful, intricately randomized repeat.
Through division and mirroring emphasized by color and texture, Angles delivers a complex geometric logic of myriad forms including tiled, prismatic, or diamond motifs, depending on the textile’s application. A sense of complex order is conveyed through a combination of systematic and dissolved repetition, rendering a kaleidoscopic effect. Always looking for new ways to showcase interesting applications of color, Paul Smith enlisted a dense, highly picked construction woven in Germany that would allow many colors to coexist within a single design.
Angles’s specialized construction affords tonal variation through intricate blends of five weft colors per colorway—all based on the expressionist palettes of Paul Smith’s Artist Stripe series. Through alternatively symmetrical and scattered placement, color moves fluidly from light to dark to cool to warm, invoking a sense of chromatic discovery across shades of rose, brick, and russet or gingko, endive, and sapphire that culminate in analogous pinwheels. Compositional variety is further amplified by an array of twill, flat, or satin weaves that define directional or radiating relationships between motifs—an effect that is underscored by light and dark yarns. In addition to creating tactile dimension, these refined textures also reflect the pattern’s tailored origins.
About Paul Smith
Paul Smith’s ability to combine a flair for eccentric detail with a dedication to the highest standards of craftsmanship has made him among the most successful fashion designers in British history. In business for over forty years, Smith continues to be an integral part of every aspect of the company as both chairman and designer, producing collections sold in over seventy countries worldwide. With an enthusiasm for wide-ranging cultural references and idiosyncratic combinations of pattern and color, applied with understatement, Paul Smith expresses a truly contemporary aesthetic.