Katharine Hamnett makes comeback with Liberty and Matchesfashion

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 21, 2018

Katharine Hamnett’s comeback will be given a boost next month when London department store Liberty includes her as part of its International Women’s Day activity with a coveted window spot alongside seven other prominent women, all photographed by Mary McCartney.

The windows are significant for such a politically-focused designer because they’re the same windows that were smashed by suffragettes a century ago in their campaign to win votes for women.

The designer dropped her first wholesale collection into Liberty last week. The new spring/summer offer followed a smaller-scale online-only return to the fashion sector in the previous autumn/winter season. She had previously closed her 25 year-old business in 2004. 

Liberty is the exclusive physical store stockist of the brand and Hamnett made a personal appearance at the central London flagship late last week, talking shoppers through the collection that includes an updated take on her slogan T-shirts that were global hits (and inspired plenty of imitators) back in the 1980s.

The new collection includes the original Choose Life tee in silk, plus other slogans such as Save the Bees, Climate Control, Save our Seas, Women against War, Save the Future, and Protest and Survive. Additionally there are classic pieces such as a denim dress, silk shirt, a slip dress, wide-leg jeans and oversized red denim jacket.

Hamnett, who has additionally produced new T-shirts carrying the slogans Cancel Brexit and Second Referendum Now, is also being stocked online by Matchesfashion this season with the return to wholesale following a successful first season when she sold only through her own webstore.

She continues to campaign against unsustainable and exploitative production processes in the fashion industry and said that if she was invited to number 10 Downing Street again (after she was famously photographed there next to Margaret Thatcher while wearing a T-shirt that said 58% Don’t Want Pershing) she would opt for Second Referendum.