HAWTHORN has made good on a promise to ditch white from its clash jumper – honouring club legend John Kennedy snr at the same time – with a return to traditional brown and gold colours.

Former captain and premiership coach Kennedy is the first of eight club legends who will be recognised in a jumper design in the coming years.

The design pays homage to the former Mayblooms (the Hawks' old moniker) guernsey – gold, emblazoned with a brown, V-shaped panel – worn by the club in 1933.

It includes a watermark on the front with a digitised version of the club's former logo and has Kennedy's signature inscribed underneath.

'NEVER AGAIN' Hawks ditch white clash jumpers

Hawthorn chief executive Justin Reeves said the club informed the AFL last year of its intention to release a new jumper sans white.

"Brown and gold are the proud colours of our club, and we're pleased the Legends guernsey can reflect this," Reeves said.

"The Legends series is about honouring our history, and what better way to do so than with a unique brown and gold strip, accompanied by a nod to one of the most influential figures our club has known."

Hawks president Jeff Kennett informed members last year, in one of his semi-regular letters, that their alternate top would no longer have any white on it.

"White is the colour of surrender, and at Hawthorn we never surrender. We might get beaten, but we fight every match out to the final siren," Kennett wrote at the time.

"That strip has been consigned to the waste paper bin forever."

Hawthorn is set to wear the jumper at all of its interstate and Marvel Stadium away games for the next two years.