The Paul Smith Barbour collaboration has arrived for autumn, and it is the kind of project that reminds you why designer partnerships, when they are done with genuine intention, still matter. Three collections in, the two British houses have produced a 38-piece range that reimagines Barbour’s classic tartan prints through Paul Smith’s characteristically bold colour palette, swapping the traditional muted tones for vibrant pinks, oranges and yellows woven across outerwear, clothing, footwear and accessories.
According to Barbour, the collection draws its inspiration from the Braemar Gathering, an annual celebration of Scottish culture. It is a considered reference point rather than a decorative one: the Gathering is rooted in Highland tradition, and using it as a lens through which to revisit tartan gives the collection a cultural grounding that mere colour play alone would not. Two of Barbour’s classic tartans have been reworked, their familiar architecture preserved but their palette entirely reconsidered. The result is something that reads as both archive and intervention simultaneously.
The Paul Smith Barbour collaboration and the art of the considered rework
There is a long history of designers approaching heritage cloth with a light touch and producing something forgettable, and an equally long history of those who push too hard and produce something unrecognisable. The Paul Smith for Barbour collection lands sensibly between the two. The bold colour palette is unmistakably Smith’s territory, but the underlying structure of the tartan, and the practical weight of Barbour’s outerwear vocabulary, remains intact. Across 38 pieces, the range moves through outerwear, clothing, footwear and accessories, making it one of the more complete capsules of the current collaboration season.
It sits alongside two other collaborations worth tracking this autumn. Hunter and Ganni have returned with a collection that brings together Hunter’s British weather-ready heritage and Ganni’s Copenhagen sensibility, producing waterproof ponchos, Wellington boots and an umbrella that are, frankly, exactly what a British October requires. The Hunter x Ganni universe has always understood that functional outerwear need not look defensive or apologetic, and this latest instalment does not deviate from that position.
Amy Powney returns to Finisterre with a second Cornish chapter
Meanwhile, the second collaboration between Amy Powney and cold-water surf and outdoor lifestyle brand Finisterre launched this week, and it is a quieter, more considered thing than the noise of tartan and Wellington boots might suggest. Inspired by Cornwall’s rugged coastline, the collection features fisherman and Arran knits, a longline waterproof parka and pleat-front trousers that combine technical performance with something that reads as genuinely effortless rather than styled to appear so.
Powney and Finisterre share a stated commitment to responsible design, and the collection reflects that alignment in its construction and material choices. What the Finisterre partnership has always done well is resist the temptation to over-style the outdoors. These are pieces that work because of their honesty to function, not in spite of it.
Powney spoke about the thinking behind the return: ‘When we created our first collection together, the intention was always to design clothing that women would genuinely live in, pieces that felt effortless, functional and made to be worn again and again. Returning for this second chapter felt like a natural evolution of that partnership. Refreshing the collection through a new colour palette inspired by the Cornish coastline gave us the opportunity to revisit the pieces in a different light, while the new fisherman rib crew cardigan felt like the perfect addition to the wardrobe.’
The fisherman rib crew cardigan she references is the kind of addition that signals a designer who knows exactly what is missing from her own previous edit rather than one who has simply returned to fill a brief. A second collection is always the harder test, and this one holds its own.
All three collaborations are available to shop now. The Paul Smith Barbour collection, with its full 38-piece range spanning outerwear through accessories, represents the most complete wardrobe proposition of the three, and the Braemar Gathering reference gives it a narrative anchor that will reward closer reading on the Barbour site.
