The spontaneous hand-drawn beauty of Steve O Smith’s work has to be seen to be believed. Over London Fashion Week, passersby at Dover Street Market stopped dead to marvel at the inside-and-out perfectionism of a few pieces of his spring collection hanging on a rail. It was like looking at 3D black-and-white freehand life drawings caught in air.
There were price tags, yes, but this was the opposite of a see-now-buy-now situation. Smith is the latest to emerge in the vanguard of young London designers who are making things to order, as do Michael Stewart and Richard Quinn.
The buzz around Smith exploded at the Met Ball in May, when Eddie Redmayne and his wife, Hannah Bagshawe, wore pieces he’d made for them from the look book he posted last season. “That experience really pushed my techniques, figuring out how everything must look in 360 degrees, from every angle,” Smith said. “Afterwards, I went home to London and drew for three weeks straight.”
His second collection flowed from the graphic inspiration he’d gleaned from studying the work of the Weimar Republic artist George Grosz. Immersed in the free and decadent culture of Berlin in the 1920s and ’30s, he hit on Pandora’s Box, the silent movie by G.W. Pabst that made the provocative Louise Brooks into a wild sensation of the flapper era.
What captivated Smith was “her expressiveness, vulnerability, and kinetic energy,” he said. “At that time, audiences were shocked by confronting her movement onscreen.” Dozens of speed drawings later, he transferred the sketches he liked best onto black appliqués running over calico or organza. As minutely painstaking as his technique is—tiny stitching, delicate finish—the energy of his artist’s hand vibes over everything from tailoring to menswear to the breathtaking lightness of his one-shoulder evening gown (a “gesture dress,” he called it).
Smith’s Lulu collection landed somewhere adjacent to the 1920s-ish period that other designers are thinking around this season. And yet again, its freshness and originality couldn’t be more alive. Smith is off to Paris to take orders in a showroom he’s rented to show his collection to clients. “It’s really interesting and rewarding, speaking to people who have the patience to order and wait,” Smith said. “That’s how I want to work—to build a modern atelier.”
