Three Men About Town

“I’m not really a shopper,” Paul C. Hudson confesses when informed he is considered a sharp dresser in L.A.’s business and civic milieus. In fact, though he favors Zegna suits and Ferragamo shoes and possesses a vast collection of ties, the captain of local banking feels his real ace in the hole is something much more mundane. “What people see in terms of style, I think, is that I always look pressed.”

“I was always a relatively conservative dresser,” says Hudson, a third-generation Angeleno. “My mother started putting me together and then I followed.” In high school, this meant button-down Brooks Brothers shirts and corduroys. And when the ‘60s found him at UC Berkeley as an undergrad, “My style changed but my habits didn’t. Even if I was wearing a dashiki and a ‘natural’ [Afro], it was cool, it was clean.”

The dashiki has long since been retired--for day wear, at least--and Hudson is now president and CEO of Broadway Federal Bank, the oldest and only publicly traded African American-managed bank west of the Mississippi. “In my industry, you really do have to watch what you wear. People are giving you their money. They’re trusting you and they don’t want to feel like they’re going to be surprised.” Hudson tends to take his fashion cues not from GQ, but from Forbes and Fortune. “I read business journals. I’m not really a fashion magazine kind of guy,” he says. “My current style is based on being around businesspeople and looking at how they’re dressed in articles.”

He’s certainly exposed to enough movers and shakers. In addition to his day job, Hudson is one of Mayor James K. Hahn’s appointees to the board of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, chairman of the American League of Financial Institutions and chairman of CommunityBuild, Inc. A past president of the Los Angeles NAACP, he sits on the boards of Pitzer College and the L.A. County Economic Development Corp.

If style is in the genes, Hudson’s got a leg up there, too. He is the grandson of eminent L.A. architect Paul R. Williams, who was responsible for projects such as Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and the Modernism-meets-”The Jetsons” building at LAX that houses Encounter restaurant. “That guy had style,” recalls Hudson. “My earliest memories of him were that he was always immaculate, to every detail. The suit fit perfectly, the shoes were always shined. Even when he was casual, he never looked like he just put something on.”

It’s that sense of effort, insists Hudson, rather than where he shops or how much he spends, that defines his own look. “I don’t think people are really looking at my labels. I just try to look like I gave some thought to getting up that morning.”