Introducing Banner Stripe, the thirtieth textile designed by Paul Smith in collaboration with Maharam. The newest design in a dialogue spanning over two decades, Banner Stripe furthers the studios’ shared interest in reinterpretations of classic motifs through idiosyncratic applications of color, pattern, and scale. The upholstery offers a fresh perspective on Paul Smith’s striped textiles for Maharam, which have evolved from variations on tailored menswear to complex syncopations to the current iteration, whose directness emphasizes color relationships.
The design began during the development process for Paul Smith shirting with a textile sample meant to display potential colors. Drawn to the raw beauty of the sample's inadvertent stripe, Smith featured the concept in his Autumn/Winter ’24 menswear collection, later working with Maharam’s design studio to reimagine it as a woven upholstery.
Banner Stripe’s archetypal pattern features distinct bands of clear hues, unified in scale across a smooth surface. The subtle luster of worsted wool recalls the textile’s origins in tailoring, while the intricate arrangement of warp and weft facilitates dexterous chromatic expression in the satin weave. Each of the six colorways contains twenty-two tones, arranged to dynamic effect to create glowing interplay across pairings like turmeric and gold, dusk and papaya, grass and sage—all contained within a single colorway.
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 fifty 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, Smith expresses a truly contemporary aesthetic.