Born: Gravesend, England, 1948
‘The only way you can change the system is from within.’ said Katherine Hamnett in Vogue in 1987. ‘The next era of conquest is to go into the boardroom wearing a smarter suit than the chairman.’ Hamnett is a diplomat’s daughter, who was educated at the genteel Cheltenham Ladies College and spent the swinging sixties at the centre of fashion activity, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She was co-founder of Tuttabanken Sportswear in 1970, and when the business folded she designed freelance in New York, Paris, Rome and London, finally founding Katharine Hamnett Limited in 1979 with a £500 loan. She survived bankruptcy and fashion fracas to branch into menswear in 1982. Her style was always sportswear – jumpsuits made from parachute silk, for example – but it was fashion with a political slant that made her name. In 1983 Hamnett launched her ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt collection, which was a milestone in the cross-fertilisation of fashion and politics.
Already a staunch supporter of the Greenham Common women and environmental issues, Hamnett was photographed meeting the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, at a Downing Street reception in her ‘58% don’t want Pershing’ T-shirt. This was a seminal moment in British fashion and the unimate photo opportunity, resulting in the image of the decade. Other slogans included ‘Stop Killing Whales’, ‘Education Not Missiles’, ‘Stop Acid Rain’, ‘Preserve the Rain Forest’ and ‘Worldwide Nuclear Ban Now’, which were all printed in huge capital letters on white T-shirts – a clever ploy to encourage copyists – the British profits from which went towards stopping child abuse. The following year, she received the British Designer of the Year Award and in 1988 the British Knitting and Clothing Export Council Award for Export. In October 1990 she made her Paris debut and launched Hamnett Active and the environmental Green Cotton Campaign.
Katharine Hammett is a designer with conviction and owns a company that has an annual turnover of £100 million and 17 licences. In 1992 she wore a ‘Vote Tactically’ T-shirt and told the Independent, ‘It’s time we got the broom out and swept the cupboard clean: the Tories have actually wrecked the country from top to bottom.’ By 1998, disillusioned with New Labour, she defected to the Conservatives and produced a T-shirt that read ‘Say No to Euro’.
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