Paul Smith expands music links with Tom Hingston collab

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 4, 2018

Paul Smith is ramping up his links to the music industry via a link-up with graphic designer Tom Hingston that includes a capsule collection and an exhibition running until May 20.

Hingston has directed music videos and created album artwork for a wide variety of pop culture icons, including Grace Jones, U2, Young Fathers, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Lady Gaga.

And Paul Smith has had long associations with musicians, most recently creating a capsule collection with REM last autumn.

Hingston is celebrating his 20th anniversary in the business and the two said it seemed like a natural thing to mark it in style.

The graphic designer and fashion designer were particularly interested in exploring alternatives to the standard cheap brand merchandise T-shirt with higher-end, limited-edition pieces that take familiar imagery and rework it.

So the collection includes leather jackets hand-painted by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, a trio of Chemical Brothers knits in acid tones inspired by the Born in the Echoes album cover, and a velvet embroidered bomber jacket by Nick Cave.

Hingston told Wallpaper: “Paul has this long-standing relationship with people like Patti Smith, Bowie, REM. His passion for music goes back a long way and so he was interested in exploring this idea of very limited edition one-off pieces that the artist or musician could sell on tour or be sold in Paul Smith stores. High-end merchandise if you like. But mostly it was about raising the bar on what exists out there at the moment.”

The exhibition at the Albemarle Street, London, Paul Smith flagship also features a reworking of Hingston’s best known album covers turned into lenticular prints that can be bought from the store. Proceeds will go to the Teenage Cancer Trust.