At home with Harriet Vine

The cult jewellery designer turned a Hackney disaster into a riot of colour.

- By Anna White

Bold, playful and a bit naughty, cult jewellery by Tatty Devine became a staple item worn by fashionistas on the streets of east London in the late 1990s. Art students Harriet Vine and Rosie Wolfenden went from selling their earrings, bracelets and necklaces — laser cut from colourful Perspex — on a market stall to selling into Harvey Nichols and Whistles and appearing in Vogue. Bespoke pieces have been commissioned by Madonna and Lily Allen and worn by Björk and Beth Ditto over the years.

Their collaborations are still going strong: Tatty Devine is the official jewellery brand for Pulp’s 2025 You Deserve More tour and there is a new exclusive collection to accompany artist Grayson Perry’s Delusions of Grandeur exhibition at The Wallace Collection.

Harriet Vine’s latest project is back on the streets of east London. The mother-of-one has just completed a remarkable transformation of a dilapidated Victorian terraced house in which she took a hammer to her own walls, taught herself how to plaster and strained her paint through tights. Living in Victoria Park with her now 17-year-old daughter and her two lodgers, Vine, 48, had always wanted her own “Victorian dolls' house”. And so, three years ago she went on the hunt in nearby Clapton.

“It was an absolute bun fight to buy a house in this area. I was coming up against young couples with a lot of financial support from their parents who were offering over asking price each time. I was pushing my budget as far as I could, on my own, with no safety net,” Vine says.

Then one morning the estate agent sent her to see the wrong property, which happened to be on sale but not advertised on the market. A fellow artist opened the door and they bonded over a mutual love of artist, filmmaker, poet and writer Jean Cocteau.