I have a piece in today's WWD about the new Paul Smith store in Hijack City. I need to ask Adriaan Louw, the photographer who took the fabulous photos, if I can reproduce some of them here.
My favorite quote in the story came from Anthony Keyworth, one of the store's owners.
Finding stylish, well-made and attractively priced men's wear has always been a challenge for sartorially conscious South Africans. The South African male himself is typically stereotyped as a sports-mad, shorts-clad species. "We felt sorry for South African men," Keyworth revealed. "The choices they had were limited."
Yeah, those short-short khaki shorts and those garish green and orange shirts have got to go! They do serve their purpose, though, on occasion. To her enduring sartorial shame, a friend of mine realized the value of wearing the shirt plus a vest made of springbok hide in Paris of all places, to humor her husband when they watched a rugby (or whatever sport it was) world cup match last September. In all fairness, he (thankfully) doesn't rock the lion-ate-my-shorts-on-safari-that's-why-they're-so-short vibe.
The fashion don't was well worth it - at the very least, she got a surprisingly warm reception from the Parisians because she clearly wasn't English. And, she returned hauling back some serious loot from the likes of Prada and Vuitton.
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