“This is a dry room,” Steve O Smith declares, despite the stack of sodden umbrellas threatening to dampen the quiet, tulle-lined oasis that is his Hackney Downs studio. One week out from his debut London Fashion Week show, the designer – famed for turning drawings into expressive dresses – is referring not to our soggy trainers (the heatwaves are well and truly over), rather his insistence on confining ink to a tiny space in his flat reserved specifically for painting. “You should see it…” says Amsterdam-born Smith, conjuring up a paper paradise bursting with brushstrokes inspired, in part, by George Grosz’s sketches of nightlife in the Weimar Republic and, most recently, André Derain’s sensory depictions of the French seaside.
While speed-drawing in his study over the summer, temperatures soared above 35 degrees. Smith’s ink began behaving differently. “It dried immediately, leaving this sort of sediment because the water evaporates,” he says of the “honest conditions” that formed the foundation of his namesake brand’s spring/summer 2027 collection: beadwork resembling glistening patches of sweat and condensation; spontaneous congealed formations made exquisite through hours and hours of embroidery and embellishment.
Being holed up there in a heightened state of creativity reminded Smith of the time he was struck down by Covid during his predominantly online Central Saint Martins MA course in 2020 (he studied at Rhode Island School of Design prior to this). “I was locked in my flat and I ran out of fabric, so I had these off-cuts that I was laying down at the same speed of how I was drawing,” he explains of how his Matisse-like process first came to light.
“Mark Tarbard, head of cutting at CSM, told me to cut like I draw – this is now stuck to my fridge so I remember,” continues Smith, who has been doodling since the age of three and credits Picasso, as well as Matisse, with inspiring his practice. While couture clients and celebrities, like Eddie Redmayne, Ariana Grande, Cate Blanchett and Hunter Schafer, fell for the romance of Steve’s art-fashion as soon as they clapped eyes on his hyper graphic, predominantly monochrome pieces, his growing fan base will no doubt delight in spring/summer 2027’s development: colour. Aside from the aforementioned beadwork, there is none of Smith’s signature black in the edit.
“It’s so funny because they tell you not to black but to black at GCSE, and, to a certain extent, it’s true; it flattens things,” shares Smith, who maintains he didn’t do well in exams because he was always scrawling in the margins (it’s not unusual for him to fill a notebook with 100 sketches in a day). This season, blue has become Smith’s safe space, and the edit of Prussian blue, cobalt and red pieces – from light-as-air slips to red carpet-worthy gowns and statuesque coats – feels lighter in every sense of the word. “The last few seasons, I’ve been inspired by German expressionism and I think that’s a reflection of politics,” explains Smith, a political podcast junkie. “But it’s been 10 years of everyone calling these unprecedented times. They are now just the times. It reminds me of that very difficult time before the First World War, when there was this return to joy and almost childlike drawing.”
The money from the LVMH Prize, which Smith won in 2025, certainly helps lighten the load on the business front. “At the very beginning, working in monochrome was almost like a cost effective thing because the idea felt so expansive,” says the designer’s designer, who recently helped coach Daniel del Valle through this year’s prize process. “Now we’ve grown, we can experiment.”
Guests at his intimate London Fashion Week show, staged in the Dunard Fund Life Drawing Studio at the Royal Academy of Arts, witnessed Smith explain the new inner workings of each characterful piece, as he sat among his creations rather than backstage, as is customary for designers. “We have our own way of making, we have our own way of selling, and so I thought, why not figure out our own way of showing where it’s more of a conversation,” he explains. Steve O Smith’s dialogue with the fashion world – a commission for Isha Ambani for the 2026 Serpentine summer party opened up the Indian market, and his partner Liren Shih, who handles press and client relations, is keen to branch out in Asia – is only just beginning in his serene and, crucially, dry studio in east London.
