Earning his stripes

''Not only is he very clever and very talented," says Christopher Bailey, chief creative officer of Burberry, "he is such a nice gentleman as well."

The gentleman in question is menswear icon Sir Paul Smith, who began his career in a factory in Nottingham, central England, 50-odd years ago, and is now based in London's West End.

Despite there being 180 people working in his impressive Covent Garden headquarters, it is Smith himself who answers when I ring the doorbell. He is friendly and familiar, coming across more chatty patriarch than head honcho.

Pointing to a jumble of brightly coloured jerseys stacked on boxes in front of his desk, he tells me they're from famous cyclists. "There's a yellow Tour de France one," says the designer, a cycling fanatic. I don't ask whether it belonged to Lance Armstrong.

Smith's large office has an ordered chaos about it. Apart from the long table in the middle of the room, all surfaces are cluttered with his collections: plastic dolls of Queen Elizabeth, who knighted him in 2000, sit beside a curious set of pastel Easter eggs and a stack of teacups. On the opposite side of the room there's a collection of hats, from Canadian mountie to British military.

The 66-year-old is clearly something of a magpie, and a man who likes to fill his time. Besides collecting things, he designs seven adult lines (four men's, three women's) each season, and is involved in countless collaborations. His current projects come on the back of the 2012 London Olympics, which he helped promote - producing a series of posters and signs for the city, as well as a compendium of stamps to commemorate the Games for the Isle of Man post office.

Next year, Smith will open his first mainland store, in Tianjin, with one in Shanghai following soon after (he already has several stores in Hong Kong). So it's little wonder his central hub is a hive of activity.