Hello My Name is Paul Smith opens at the Design Museum

Aboud Creative’s Alan Aboud has been creative director of Paul Smith for 25 years. He says, ‘I’ve helped curate areas as I’m aware of historical artifacts and the longevity of his work.’

Aboud has also worked on a previous Paul Smith exhibition with the Design Museum, Paul Smith True Brit in 1997.

Hello My Name Is Paul Smith is ‘a marker in time, not a retrospective’ according to Aboud who says, ‘It’s  a personal exhibition about how Smith has grown, and his collaborations with other people; but it’s not an ending.’

Visitors will be given a sense of where Smith and his design team work, there will be ‘a review of promotional material’ and a section devoted to the designer’s collaborations with the likes of Mini and Fritz Hansen.

An overview of Paul Smith stores has been created, including a short film on the design of the new Mayfair store.

A textured photo wall of framed images found or sent to Paul Smith, which he has collected, and photographs he has taken have been compiled ‘to give a sense of his life’ says Aboud.

Inside Paul’s Head is a ‘psychedelic’ insight into the designer’s mind, which Aboud says Smith has told him will leave visitors ‘needing a paracetamol afterwards’.

It has been designed as a mirrored box, developed with Sony, containing 22 screens. The AV installation has been created using imagery provided by Paul Smith. 

The piece surrounds visitors with visuals created from Smith’s photographic archive, which morph into images of the pieces they inspired.

The finale of the exhibition is a fashion show filmed in Sony’s 4K technology and shown on 3 of its 4K TVs which the manufacturer claims gives four times the quality of HD.

Aboud Creative has also designed a book entitled Hello My Name Is Paul Smith, which has been edited by Alan Aboud and published by Rizzoli.