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Jeff Banks

British fashion designer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ6173293
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

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.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1943, 1986, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1943-03-17. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Jeff, Banks and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Jeff Banks”, the useful work is to connect “british fashion designer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

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.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jeff Banks”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jeff Banks primary sources, Jeff Banks archive and Jeff research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jeff Banks”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

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.