Steve O Smith won the Karl Lagerfeld award in last year’s LVMH Prize. It could hardly have been a happier fit for the memorial gift to a young designer, which Delphine Arnault instituted in the great maestro’s name. Lagerfeld was a prodigious sketcher, and Smith’s own fluid drawings are at the center of his work.
Smith showed what he’s been able to accomplish with the money this season, elevating his living illustrations ever-nearer to haute couture. Inspiration-wise, his starting points were “Looking at Otto Dix, Edward Burra and Madeleine Vionnet,” he said. Dix depicted the decadent underbelly of post World War I Berlin, Burra, a queer British artist, painted Harlem nightlife around the same time, while Vionnet was inventing the bias-cut in Paris.
The synchronicity of these influences—“They were all around the late 1920s”—sent Smith off on one of his painting sprees, transposing character sketches into loose interpretations of flapper dresses and fragile bias slip dresses, alongside vestigial impressions of waiters, soldiers, impresarios and barflies.
What was new here is that it was the first time Smith has added color to his black and white register. His washes of red, dabs of pink on peach, and patches of brown were achieved with layers of hand-dyed tulle, the lines are cut-outs superimposed on organza and, where Smith’s illustrations suggest free-hand bows, they’re minutely beaded.
Right from his first season, only two years ago, Smith magnetized people who are willing to commission and wait for their pieces of art/fashion to be made for them. “Loyal customers keep coming back,” he noted. In his interview for the LVMH Prize, he pitched for spending the cash on building an expert team in London, so he can push his techniques further. “So now we’ve assembled this team—an amazing cutter, embroiderer and sewer. They’ve all come from couture backgrounds,” he said, adding with a laugh, “and we’re now in a studio that’s not my living room. So that’s a pretty big one.”
What next? Slow fashion, meticulously made for private clients, is a sound niche and business model for this young designer in rough times for the wider industry. Being careful with money is a virtue, too—a discipline inborn in a generation that’s grown up with having to be resourceful through the pandemic. “I’ve been ring-fencing the LVMH money, so I don’t spend it all at once,” said Smith. So far, he’s been operating on lookbooks and private client appointments in London and Paris. Still: the wonder of Steve O Smith’s clothes is their 3D-ness. What it would be to see the soft bounce of the poufs, the flutter of the godets, and how impeccably that red shaded jacket fits in movement. One day soon, he should really do that.