Getting Dressed: Helena Kennedy
Barrister Helena Kennedy cares about causes – and clothes
Last term at school, my grandchildren were stressed out by exams and school interviews. ‘Which man or woman do you most admire?’ was one of their questions. I know exactly who is my choice – the human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy, or, more formally, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws. She has so many letters after her name that you can hardly fit them on an envelope, and has held too many prestigious appointments for me to even begin to list them.
This summer alone will see the opening by Kofi Annan of the Institute of Human Rights at Mansfield College, Oxford, where she has been Principal for the past seven years. She is president of various institutions (‘President Kennedy’ has a certain ring to it,’ she said once); she is a writer, a TV personality, a mother of three, loves clothes, and knows how to rollerblade (Ruby Wax taught her).
Most of all, I admire her because the House of Lords is a very long way from the tenement in Glasgow where she was raised. Only a true heroine could have completed the journey so successfully, without losing either her passion for the law or her humanity and humour. Right now, though, she has her head in her hands because of Brexit. She weeps, too, at the failure of people to recognise the importance of the rule of law in the making of a civilised world. In 1967, when Kennedy left her Glasgow school (where she was head girl), she applied to university (the first member of her family to do so). She decided to go to London to study law ‘because the Sixties hadn’t quite got to Glasgow’. Her learning curve was far more about social than academic stuff. ‘I felt I had stepped into an Evelyn Waugh novel. But while I was busy watching what knife to use, I was firmly rooted in who I was. Being a working-class person was not a source of shame.’ Only seven per cent of lawyers were women then, and Kennedy was shocked at the casual discrimination against them in the profession. So – typically – she did something about it. Aged only 24, she started, with friends, a set of chambers, Garden Court. ‘Sometimes when you are young, you do things because you are so innocent you do not realise how bold it actually is. We lived on air and the sheer bliss of acting for the underdog and sometimes winning! In the early days, I acted for lots of Scots who got arrested, including prostitutes from my home town. I learned so much from them about the ways of the world. They had all had rotten lives but, by God, could they make you laugh.’ Because she was one of four daughters, Kennedy’s clothes as a girl had been hand-me-downs from older sisters or cousins. She was only able to buy her own as a law student with earnings from holiday jobs – ‘I spent money on clothes rather than food; so I got quite thin.’ Her favourite shops then were Biba and Bus Stop and she relished being arty and bohemian with kohled eyes, long suede boots and a miniskirt under a maxi coat.
Later, at work at the Bar, the rule was that women wore black, and trousers were banned in court. ‘I was already a QC in the mid-nineties when that regulation changed – when I heard the news, I got straight into a taxi at the Old Bailey and went to Emporio Armani and bought a lovely pinstriped pants suit with a nipped-in waist. But I never really felt constrained by having to wear black. It’s a flattering colour for working women if worn with interesting jewellery and scarves.’
Twice, judges have complained about her appearance: once about her cluster of silver bracelets; another time, her ponytail. Both times they got short shrift.
Serious work does require a certain degree of formality, says Kennedy, 67. ‘But being a feminist has never stopped my enjoyment of clothes and perfume and make-up and generally trying. I don’t feel it is in the least contradictory.’
She buys dresses from L K Bennett and has a collection of long jackets in lovely fabrics because she finds them an easy way to create different looks without too much hassle. She hangs on to clothes for years. Her surgeon husband accuses her of ‘wardrobe imperialism’ and complains there is nowhere for him to hang his suits. Her most extravagant purchase was long ago – a couture black dress for £1,200 – ‘My friends led me astray; I had sleepless nights over it, but I still wear it, so it has lasted the course.’
Kennedy keeps trim doing Pilates twice a week and has a trainer to keep her in line. In a newspaper interview, she once joked that she had a secret crush on George Clooney (these days she is in chambers with Amal Clooney). Was this true, I asked? ‘Yes’, she laughs. ‘George is gorgeous... but then so is my own husband!’