“We Were Complete Amateurs!” Katharine Hamnett On What The First London Fashion Week Was Really Like

When London Fashion Week set up shop in 1984 in Kensington’s Commonwealth Institute car park, Katharine Hamnett was intrigued. The designer, who founded her namesake brand in 1979 and launched her first logo T-shirt in 1981, had never been to a fashion show for fear of being influenced by other designers, but was fascinated by what a show could be. For the Saint Martin’s School of Art alumni, it was very much about performance. “Why do you buy clothes?” she asks now. “You think they are going to make you happy, so it’s about making moments of happiness.”

London Fashion Week’s debut marked a big year for Hamnett personally. Her father wanted to live until 1984 to see if it would be like the George Orwell novel. He didn’t. “I have always been a lazy person, happy to keep my nose above water, but this year, I really went for it,” she shares of signing up to the show circuit with vigour. Katharine’s rambunctious presentation centred around a James Bond theme, but the smoke machine primed for the big finale popped off accidentally at the start. With photographers fuming about the smog ruining “the shot”, but a party atmosphere in the air regardless, models danced around the stage to the sound of the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin. Harvey Weinstein – the now disgraced mogul who was a burgeoning producer at the time – told Hamnett afterwards, “We could take that show on the road!” But for the woman of the hour, there was a huge feeling of relief that, quite simply, nothing had fucked up. “We were complete amateurs!”

Wham! adopted Hamnett’s slogan tees as their popstar uniform.

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