Paul Smith

Paul Smith opened a three-metre-square shop in Nottingham in 1970, open Fridays and Saturdays only, stocked with what he liked and couldn't find elsewhere. From it grew British fashion's most reliable export and its longest-running independent: Sir Paul still owns his company, still designs, still fills his Covent Garden office with the bicycles, robots and art postcards that famously feed the collections.

The formula he named "classic with a twist" is deceptively hard: proper English tailoring — he trained himself via evening classes and his wife Pauline Denyer's couture training — detonated by one joke: a flash of multi-stripe lining, a naked-lady cuff print, a photographic floral. The signature multi-stripe became one of fashion's most recognizable patterns without a logo in sight.

Japan adopted him at national scale — hundreds of shops — and the Mayfair flagship at Albemarle Street trades behind a famous cast-iron facade. Knighted in 2000, Smith remains menswear's best argument that wit is a form of quality.