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Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Replica Handbag Store Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is Paul Smith’s Foundation director, Martha Mosse. The foundation was set up in 2020 to help build business resilience for emerging creatives, including but not limited to fashion designers. As part of that, in 2024, they launched a four-and-a-half-year initiative specifically for fashion designers called the Fashion Residency, which offers studio spaces and mentoring.
Martha joined the foundation in 2023 from Alexander McQueen’s Sarabande Foundation, where she had been since its early beginnings. I called her up for a chat.
Tell me, Martha, what’s the scoop?
Three of the designers supported by The Fashion Residency at Paul Smith’s Foundation — Paolo Carzana, Karoline Vitto, and Yaku — have designed an exclusive T-shirt to be launched in collaboration with Tate Galleries on April 23.
What led to this partnership, and what’s the goal behind it?
These three designers have been supported in developing their brands for over 18 months now. We’ve set up this partnership with Tate to give them the opportunity to respond creatively to art in a way that makes sense for them. But it is also a commercial project, in which they are being paid to participate. So it’s designed to guide them through the process of bringing a new product to market with a very important partner, from commissioning to it being reviewed by the Tate team, to going to the factory, and so on.
Can you shed some light on how the foundation works? How often do you plan to have a new cohort? How do you work with the old cohort?
These designers are supported by a program called The Fashion Residency, set up by Paul Smith’s Foundation in partnership with the Mayor of London and Projekt, and supported by British GQ and the City of London Corporation. In short, it’s a business development program in which six designers get a free studio space at Smithfield in London for 18 months, and enroll in a business skills course that includes 80 hours of lessons. The lessons cover common legal issues, e-commerce marketing, and brand graphics. It’s been created to touch upon all the different aspects of running a business that aren’t the creative side of things. And it’s been designed with Paul Smith in mind, who is a brilliant creative, but also a brilliant businessman.
The first cohort, who started in 2024, just moved out of Smithfield. We have found them another studio space to move into through a new partnership with the Paul Smith’s Foundation, Culture Mile BID, SET, and Travelodge. Travelodge has invested a significant amount of money to build studios in a disused building in Liverpool Street.
So you are still supporting your first cohort. When does the program end?
It ends when we run out of buildings, I suppose. If people keep giving me buildings, I will keep making studios out of them. Studio space is really hard to come by, and it’s really expensive when you do find it. But the second site comes with an expectation of rent. It is vastly reduced — nominal, really, especially for this standard of space. But we wanted to make sure that our support is responsible and helps people as they grow. Because, at some point, these designers will have to pay market rate in London, right? It needs to not be such a dramatic drop off for their business once they don’t have that rent relief.
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What have you found is the number one business skill you’ve had to help fledgling designers build?
The sessions that people have been most engaged with are the legal sessions. It’s such a complex and opaque world. We’re really lucky to be working with a law firm called Osborne Clarke, who have gifted a minimum of 30 hours of lessons throughout the year and 60 hours of pro bono support for the brands as well. So, you know, we’ve got people like Paolina Russo, who have negotiated really significant IP contracts with global brands. Osborne Clarke has also provided the kind of contract checklists that one has to review before signing an NDA or an intern agreement. Or it might be somebody having issues with customs. It’s a very bespoke program where we respond directly to each brand’s needs.
The BFC just unveiled its first strategy under new CEO Laura Weir. What were some interesting points in the strategy for you?
We were obviously delighted to see the increased focus on support. It was also really encouraging to see the realistic metrics that they had put in place in the report. Like, through the Fashion House initiative, they want 70% of businesses to be successful for three years after graduating from the program. It’s always encouraging to see the specifics of what people want to achieve.
The BFC is a really vital megaphone to the world about how the UK supports fashion. So a strategy that focuses on support tells the world that we, collectsively within the industry, are here to create robust businesses with realistic expectations for what can be done within the fashion market.
And you know, Paul Smith’s Foundation exists to better the business skills of creative people. If a creative practitioner knows really well how to work with factories, operations, HR, and manufacturing, in addition to being a brilliant designer, then they’ll arguably be much more employable elsewhere. Everyone we support thus far wants their own brand, but that doesn’t prevent them from doing consultancy work.
Speaking of creative directors, we had two more announcements in the last few weeks. Mark Thomas left Carven after only two seasons; Courrèges has a new designer. Will the creative reset ever end?
I think it’s endemic in life that people are looking for new things, but also for news. Often, maybe more quickly than it’s needed. I don’t think it’s unique to fashion; you can also see it in politics and sports.
One of the things we talk about at the foundation is starting strong, growing gently and not being desperate to kind of explode or scale too quickly. The designers we’re supporting have a lot of attention, which sometimes comes with expectations that are very hard to meet in terms of production or delivery deadlines. It’s about taking a step back and thinking: “How can I do this in a responsible way that will not kill me?” Paul Smith himself is so utterly remarkable in that he still owns 80% of the brand that he built 56 years ago, which is almost miraculous in this day and age.
Are the young designers you work with using AI? If so, how and how are you guys advising them to navigate the slop conversation?
Harri, who’s one of the brands in the second cohort, is using it for their pattern cutting. As you probably know, Harri has a very distinctive inflatable style. They were speaking to Michelle Mahlke, who is their personal mentor, about how to speed up their processes, and she introduced them to a super user of Cloud3D, who came and did a demonstration, and now they’re using that tool. There’s still a lot of handmade elements to their design, but they’re using it to support their pattern-cutting processes.
The term “AI slop” is quite a funny one because, yeah, a lot of what’s made with AI is rubbish, but a lot of it isn’t. If somebody’s using it to create terrible art, it says more about them. But what we really need to be focusing on when it comes to AI is copyright law. It’s the part that is the most opaque and not being properly addressed by policymakers.
It’s a subject we discuss all the time with Osborne Clarke. With the expansion of AI, it’s a complete movable feast and very hard to stay on top of. I would say make sure you’re informed, and when you see something that’s not right, be vocal about it.
You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Dream Baby Press’s Matt Starr here.
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