Ben Kelly (designer)

Manchester City and Puma's 2019/20 football jersey featured Kelly's signature black and yellow stripes.

As a tribute to both the anniversary of The Haçienda and the grand opening of the UK’s first Yohji Yamamoto Y-3 exclusive store, a special Adidas FAC51-Y3 model was created in 2007.

The 2002 film 24 Hour Party People tells the stories that centred around The Haçienda, with a reproduction of the club built for the movie.

In 1995 Kelly designed Peter Saville’s legendary Mayfair apartment in London that was also shared by Meiré und Meiré. The mood and mythologies of that space inspired and informed a shoot with Nick Knight for the July 2009 'Sex' issue of Wallpaper Magazine. Kelly has designed several gyms for Gymbox in London, and is also a furniture designer. Kelly has recently completed a number of collaborations with Virgil Abloh; Josephine Nightclub in Paris, and a DJ touring set that Abloh travels with and debuted at Art Basel Miami.

Ben Kelly is best known for his interior design of The Haçienda in Manchester, which he converted from a yacht showroom in 1982, retaining its red brick facade, inner columns and large iron doors. Kelly was recommended to design The Haçienda by Saville. Kelly also did much other work for Factory Records, including their 1990 company office in Charles Street, Manchester.

Kelly collaborated with Peter Saville on numerous projects who acknowledged basing much of his early work on Kelly's. Kelly and Saville won a Designers and Art Directors Award for the sleeve of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's 1980 self-titled first album.

In the 1974, manager Malcolm McLaren asked Kelly to refurbish a basement rehearsal room for The Sex Pistols in Denmark Street, London, which McLaren had bought from Badfinger. Kelly had designed the store front for Vivien Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Seditionaries shop. In 1977 Kelly was also arrested with Westwood and McLaren when police raided The Sex Pistols' legendary Silver Jubilee cruise, organised by Richard Branson to launch the single "God Save the Queen". Kelly was also known at the time by his alter ego "The Photo Kid", and he still uses the name on social media.

On arriving in London in 1971, Kelly was greatly influenced by Kenneth Anger's films and visiting the ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Kelly cites Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp as his two main influences.

Ben Kelly grew up in the village of Appletreewick then in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Kelly trained at Lancaster College of Art, from 1964 to 1969 and graduated in Interior Design from the Royal College of Art in 1974. Kelly was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 2007. Kelly is an Honorary Doctor, and Professor of Interior Design at London's Kingston University. In 2018 Kelly was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Art.