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Katharine Hamnett, pictured, has admitted that she is horrified by the fashion industry’s record on sustainability, and the fact that so many people commit suicide on cotton farms. Figures show around 300,000 have done so in the last 20 years<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018It\u2019s a complete nightmare, and incredibly disruptive for the climate.\u2019<\/p>\n
(Later, I check her figures and find it\u2019s more like 300,000 deaths over 20 years \u2014 shocking, nonetheless.)<\/p>\n
Katharine Hamnett has always been outspoken. After graduating from Saint Martin\u2019s School of Art in 1969, her eponymous label became the de facto uniform of excess-loving British stars of the Eighties, and everyone from George Michael to Madonna wore her unmissable black-and-white slogan T-shirts.<\/p>\n
She is probably still most widely known for one headline-grabbing stunt back in 1984. She turned up to a London Fashion Week reception at Downing Street wearing a white T-shirt she\u2019d block-printed with the slogan: \u201858% Don\u2019t Want Pershing\u2019 (a reference to an unpopular suggestion that U.S. Pershing intercontinental ballistic missiles be based in the UK).<\/p>\n
The Press photographers went wild, while then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded with a pithy: \u2018Oh, we haven\u2019t got Pershing here, my dear. We\u2019ve got Cruise [missiles]. So maybe you\u2019re at the wrong party.\u2019<\/p>\n
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George Michael and Madonna famously donned clothes made by the designer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Katharine was not on the guest list for the following year\u2019s reception. It was a notable exclusion \u2014 at the time, she was arguably the UK\u2019s highest-profile designer and had just won the British Fashion Council\u2019s first-ever Designer Of The Year award.<\/p>\n
Her monochrome separates were worn by Princess Diana, while the \u2018Frankie Says Relax\u2019 tees made famous by Frankie Goes To Hollywood were based on her designs.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until 2011 that she was awarded a CBE for her services to the fashion industry, choosing to meet the Queen wearing an organic cotton dress of her own design and a striking Philip Treacy hat covered in red cockerel feathers.<\/p>\n
Today, we meet at her East London studio, where she still works. She arrives with her little terrier, Arthur, having walked from her home across London Fields.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s tall and elegant, with a punky twist \u2014 a cross between Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde. She is wearing a black (slogan-free) T-shirt with black cigarette trousers, dark shades and an immaculate black manicure, along with her messy dark bob.<\/p>\n
She is warm and affable, but seems not to have mellowed with age. These days, her preoccupation is sustainability in the fashion industry. \u2018We have to change; our lives are at stake. And that of every other living thing on the planet, too,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n
This stance is entwined with her interest in Buddhism, which began in the Eighties. Its teachings spurred her to look into the ethics of every aspect of her life, including her business.<\/p>\n
\u2018I asked my design team to do some research into cotton in 1989 and, when the report came back . . .\u2019 Katharine shakes her head.<\/p>\n
\u2018It was devastation: 10,000 deaths per year from accidental pesticide poisoning, contamination of the water supply.\u2019<\/p>\n
But would she really take back all of her glittering career if she could? Well, maybe. She has described her time at art school, from 1964 to 1969, as \u2018absolute heaven . . . the first time the working-class had mixed with the upper-class\u2019.<\/p>\n
She admits: \u2018I had to tone down my accent a bit.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Katharine Hamnett said that, if she had the choice again, she would become a film director<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
She is undeniably posh. Born in Gravesend, Kent, the daughter of a society beauty and a military attache, she boarded at Cheltenham Ladies\u2019 College (\u2018I hated it,\u2019 she has said).<\/p>\n
When her father worked in Bucharest, she commuted to school on the Orient Express.<\/p>\n
Clothes were important for the various embassy events and parties the family had to attend, but Katharine found it hard to find ready-to-wear because she\u2019s nearly 6 ft.<\/p>\n
So, when the family were based in Paris while she was a teenager, she started to make her own clothes. The hobby became an obsession that led to art school.<\/p>\n
She is very much the Sixties art school grad: deeply eccentric and \u2014 though I\u2019m sure she wouldn\u2019t thank me for saying it \u2014 a hippy to her core. And yet she came to embody the over-the-top, have-it-all culture of the Eighties.<\/p>\n
She says: \u2018We were just expanding and expanding. We were selling in 700 shops in 40 countries around the world \u2014 it was almost too easy. The extravagance was getting out of control. But, of course, I was also enjoying being out of control.<\/p>\n
\u2018I remember insisting on staying on an island on Lake Maggiore [in Italy] where a boatman would have to come and get us. Oh, God!\u2019 She shudders. \u2018We did one fashion show at the Cirque d\u2019Hiver \u2014 a beautiful, neo-classical theatre building in Paris. And they still had the animals then \u2014 these huge panthers in enormous cages. We did the changes in the stables, which had chandeliers and red carpet. It was amazing.\u2019<\/p>\n
Was she a ghastly diva?<\/p>\n
\u2018Beyond! And we were very naughty, but our trick was staying out of the papers.\u2019<\/p>\n
She pauses. \u2018Did you ever come to our parties on the Bateaux Mouches during Paris Fashion Week? People talked about it for 15 years! We flew over Paul O\u2019Grady back when he was Lily Savage, and the French had never seen anything like it.\u2019<\/p>\n
All a far cry from the eco-warrior of today \u2014 a transformation that, she admits, was a long and difficult process.<\/p>\n
Katharine spent the Nineties fighting to make her company more ethical, while raising her children. She\u2019s been married (and divorced) twice, the first time at 21 to Richard Hamnett, a graphic designer, and then to painter Jeffrey Pine, with whom she has sons Samuel, now 42, and William, 37.<\/p>\n
\u2018I had family things going on in the Nineties and I was also trying to change the company around. It was unbelievably difficult,\u2019 she recalls. \u2018I had total opposition from my organisation. People were saying: \u2018Yeah, yeah, of course!\u2019 \u2014 and then I\u2019d find out they\u2019d substituted unsustainable materials.\u2019<\/p>\n
There is, I observe, a lot of talking around these issues \u2014 and some hypocrisy, too. Whether the global fashion industry can ever be truly sustainable is a moot point.<\/p>\n
As for Fashion Week, when hordes of Press, buyers, celebrities and influencers jet around the world to shows, Katharine observes: \u2018It\u2019s very hard to beat the impact of the live show \u2014 but I think they should be live-streamed. We need to be clever at making clothes that people want and present them differently.\u2019<\/p>\n
I ask what we can all do to make a difference. \u2018Mend your clothes and sew buttons back on.\u2019 Pause. \u2018And buy organic cotton. I met the sustainability director at H&M and asked why they didn\u2019t use more organic cotton \u2014 and they use a lot \u2014 and she said: \u201cWe can\u2019t get it.\u201d I said: \u201cBut if you talked to the farmers! You\u2019re big enough to order it and pre-pay for the crop. They\u2019d plant it for you!\u201d Everyone\u2019s got to get off their a**e.\u2019<\/p>\n
I think \u2018GET OFF YOUR A**E\u2019 would make an ideal slogan for one of Katharine\u2019s T-shirts.<\/p>\n
Her passion and drive are both exciting and exhausting. Yet you can\u2019t help but admire her for trying to change things from the inside.<\/p>\n
I confess, guiltily, that, at her age, I might be tempted to put my feet up by a pool \u2014 she has a home in the north of Mallorca. Her response? \u2018Honestly, you\u2019d die of boredom in about six minutes!\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katharine Hamnett is one of Britain\u2019s most acclaimed designers. But, she tells me frankly, if she could have her time again, she wouldn\u2019t go into fashion at all. \u2018If I\u2019d known at the beginning of my career what I know now, I would have done something intelligent instead \u2014 like become a film director,\u2019 she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-news"],"yoast_head":"\n