Jeremy Hackett was brought up and educated in Clifton, Bristol. Not being of a particularly academic aptitude he left school at 17 to take up a full time job in a local men’s fashion shop having worked there previously as a Saturday boy.
Within a year he moved to London and worked in the fashionable King's Road before accepting a position at a tailors shop on Savile Row. It was then that he began to day dream about starting his own clothing business. As a sideline he bought and sold second hand clothes purchased from the London street markets.
Through this he met up with Ashley Lloyd-Jennings, who shared similar tastes, and between them they started Hackett at, as their bank manager of the time pointed out, the wrong end of the New King's Road: they were happy to prove him wrong.