Jeff Banks
British fashion designer

Jeff Banks (born Jeffrey Tatham-Banks, 17 March 1943) is a Welsh fashion 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.
Biography
Banks was born in the Welsh town of Ebbw Vale, in Blaenau Gwent. His father, a sheet metal worker, left Banks' mother when Banks was eight, and she subsequently decided to move to London.
He was offered a scholarship at independent public school St Dunstan's College, in Catford, south London, but his mother could not afford the uniform. He went to Brockley County Grammar School instead, but still without a uniform. To pay for it he set up his own business buying paraffin at the bottom of a hill, then pushing it up in an old pram, and selling it for a penny more at the top of the hill. By 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 transferred to study 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.
The public source identifies “Jeff Banks” as british fashion designer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jeff, Banks and British.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6173293. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1986 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jeff Banks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.