Jeff Banks

Jeff Banks
Jeff Banks in Melbourne, 2013
Born	(1943-03-17) 17 March 1943 (age 73) Ebbw Vale, Wales
Nationality	Welsh
Occupation	Fashion designer
Labels	Jeff Banks

Jeff Banks CBE (born Jeffrey Tatham-Banks, 17 March 1943) is a Welsh designer of men's and women's clothing, jewellery, and home furnishings. Born in Ebbw Vale, Wales, Banks co-founded the fashion chain Warehouse in the late 1970s. He later created and presented the television programme The Clothes Show, broadcast on BBC One from 1986 to 2000.

Banks was born in the Monmouthshire valleys of South Wales, at Ebbw Vale. His sheet metal worker father left his mother when Banks was eight, and she consequently decided to move to London, England.

He was offered a scholarship to independent public school St Dunstan's College, in Catford, South London, but his mother couldn't afford the uniform. He went to Brockley County Grammar School instead, but still without a uniform. In order to afford a uniform he set up his own business buying paraffin at the bottom of the hill, then pushing it up in an old pram, and selling it for a penny more at the top of the hill. By age 13 he was employing a man to drive a lorry-based tanker, and at 15 he sold the business.

Encouraged by a teacher to study art and become a painter, he realised his art skills were limited during his first year at London's Camberwell School of Art, and so transferred to studying interior design and latterly textiles at Saint Martin's School of Art, and then fashion at New York's Parsons The New School for Design.