My Life In Menswear: Paul Harvey
How would you describe your own personal style, Paul?
Boring. It's very classical. When you work in fashion, you tend to not worry about the way you're dressing. I tend to live in jeans and a t-shirt, a pair of Converse in the summer, and maybe a pair of Dr. Martens or Church’s in the winter. In Italy, they say the cobbler always has a hole in his shoe. He’s fixing everybody else's shoes except his own, and that’s the same for me to be honest. I think about clothing all the time as my job, so I try not to think about what I’m actually wearing. I guess you could call it uniform dressing. I think it’s become sort of trendy to be like this lately, but I’ve been doing it forever.
And how would you describe your approach to fashion design?
Very caring. I tend to care an awful lot about everything. I’ve always had a tremendous attention to detail. Across the brands I’ve worked with, we’ve also always tried to stay away from decoration, so everything had a sort of pseudo-function. At Stone Island, I was very lucky that I could be totally uncompromising. I never had anyone looking over my shoulder telling me what I could and couldn’t do in terms of money. Obviously sometimes I had to rein myself in, but the possibility of being uncompromising was incredible.
Did that approach evolve over the years?
I started at a very small German label called Sabotage. We were selling around 15,000 pieces a season to independent retailers, which is nothing in the larger market. That allowed us to be very experimental.
A lot of that experimentation then led into Stone Island, but the product had to sell, so some of the crazy ideas had to be toned down a little bit. Some of them were still pretty crazy, but they had to be approachable for consumers.
Ten c is a very stripped-down version of what we were doing with Stone Island. I think of it as a mature person’s approach to it. I had got all of these incredible, outlandish designs out of my system, and Ten c represents the essential bit that’s left.
Those three brands have a natural progression between them. C.P. Company was a different thing because it was a different moment in time and production had changed tremendously. It had a different set of criteria.
Is there a particular piece or innovation from your career that you are most proud of?
One that really stands out to me is the fabric that we started off with at Sabotage. It was a very fine nylon gauze, made with a monofilament nylon which gives it a transparent effect. It’s the stuff they make silk screens out of, but we made a gilet out of it. At Stone Island we were very into this idea of deconstructing Gore-Tex and we used that nylon gauze again quite a lot. The way that we took one fabric and used it in so many different ways is something I am incredibly proud of.
That approach inspired a lot of people. Tell us about a brand that’s inspired you…
One that comes straight to mind is Arc’teryx. The way they looked at the construction of garments was really great. They were pre-constructing as much as possible which was really interesting. I have also always really liked the way Comme des Garçons is sold in Japan, where its products are framed more as basics. There is this one fabric that they do almost everything in – in black obviously. I really like that idea of a simple wardrobe, which I guess goes back to the uniform dressing thing. It’s very close to what agnès b. does with men’s suiting. They use one fabric and they keep changing the style of the jacket and trousers.
What do you think is the best era for menswear?
I can’t think of just one to be honest. I love the way James Dean and Marlon Brando wore a t-shirt, but a lot of other people from that time weren’t dressing like that. It was sort of rebellious. Some of the really sharp suits from the 1960s were great, but then there’s a lot of stuff from the 60s that was a load of rubbish, just like any other era. I think almost every era has really good bits and some that are bad.
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Where do you find inspiration?
While I was working with CP Company, we looked quite closely at smaller Japanese and Korean brands. Comfy Outdoor Garment does some really interesting stuff, but I wouldn’t really be able to pick out one in particular. I do believe that if you do something really well, people will believe you. With the explosion of social media and influencers, everything is happening at once, but also nothing is happening at the same time.
Do you think you have ever been influenced by popular culture?
Not really, to be honest. Sabotage was as weird and original as possible. There were some interesting things happening around the same time – the whole snowboard scene was starting, baggy trousers and big smocks were coming in – that fed into the street clothes we were making. Stone Island was always its own reference point. We weren’t really ever following anybody. Ten c was sort of an environmental thing where I wanted to create a product that people would keep forever and that would get nicer as it aged. Again, CP Company was quite different. It got caught up in a wave of streetwear where I think there were some basic rules and basic shapes.
Do you have any style icons?
I loved the way David Bowie inhabited clothing. He changed his look so many times, but he got away with it. In 1972 he was wandering around in a very short white silk dress, but he could get away with it.
Has your style changed as you've got older?
It's become even more boring. There are certain things I just can’t pull off anymore. I recently tried on my daughter's MA-1 bomber jacket. I looked at myself and thought, yeah, you can’t wear that. The first time I showed up at Stone Island, I wore an enormous pair of German ski pants from the Second World War. They had been dyed blue and were great, but they were huge, so I couldn’t wear something like that anymore. My personal wardrobe has become much more basic. I’m either in jeans and a t-shirt or a suit and tie. There’s no middle ground. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
What was your personal style like in your 20s?
In my 20s I was at Central Saint Martins. I had orange hair, a few affectations, and some bracelets and things. I think that's where the jeans thing started, as a reaction to the ambiance of the institution. I didn’t really see the point in dressing up to be a fashion student. Some guys would get up early and put their makeup on, but I just didn’t really see the point. I guess my sentiment was that I was there to be a fashion designer, not to show people I am one through the way I dress.
Any style rules – or strong opinions – you’d like to share?
If I had three rules, they would be: look in the mirror, look in the mirror, and look in the mirror. But also, act your age not your shoe size. There are some things I loathe, but there are some strange things I love, like sandals with socks. When I was going to school, the uniform in the summer was sandals with socks, and I kind of grew to love it. I can’t stand super-tight stretch jeans on men, especially when you can see someone’s phone in their pocket. It’s a small thing, but I think it is so awful.
Socks and sandals aside, are there any other failsafe combinations in menswear?
If you have a jacket in the same fabric and colour as your trousers – what some would call a suit – it tends to work. With suits in general, you have to really try to get it wrong. The idea that the top bit and the bottom bit match in colour or fabric brings a sense of smartness that I think really works.
What gives you the most pride from your career in fashion?
All of it was very uncompromised. I was incredibly lucky to be in that position because now there are so many other factors about where things are produced and how. Sabotage, Stone Island and Ten c are very pure brands, which I think and I hope comes across.
Finally, Paul, what’s your most worn item at the moment?
In Italy this summer, we had five months of 35°C weather nearly every day. It was really full on, and I lived in a pair of black Nike football shorts in a woven fabric. They’re the kind of shorts you can throw in the wash, take them out, and they’re dry in 10 minutes. I even went in the sea with them. I think everyone has at least one piece of clothing they could just live in forever. These shorts have been that item for me. My old reliable.
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