Inside the 50 fabulous and 'forgotten' years of Dame Zandra Rhodes

This was published 7 months ago


"Everyone says the Seventies were so sexist, but they're looking at it from the wrong perspective. I think the Nineties were probably the worst decade for me," says Dame Zandra Rhodes, fanning herself with a stray scrap of paper on a very hot day recently in London.

We're sitting - melting - above the Fashion and Textile Museum she willed into existence 16 years ago in Bermondsey, south-east London, long before the area became a hipster magnet. Like its owner, it is a riot of colour and theatricality.

Designer Zandra Rhodes at home.

Designer Zandra Rhodes at home.Credit:Andrew Crowley for The Telegraph

Furniture and rails of sample dresses jostle with pillars, busts and the what-have-yous that arty friends, such as the sculptor and performance artist Andrew Logan, have given her. It is here that Dame Zandra, a former contestant on Celebrity MasterChef  in the UK (she did not, to her chagrin, win) entertains friends - Lulu, Britt Ekland, Duggie Fields. It sounds a hoot.

But we've already digressed. The Nineties, bad? "I thought the whole world had forgotten me," she says in her matter-of-fact, still-Chatham-after-all-these-years accent.


Surely not. This is the woman whose clothes graced Natalie Wood, Debbie Harry, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy ... It was Dame Zandra's diaphanous white cloud of tulle that floated mistily around the Princess Royal in her Norman Parkinson engagement portrait and made the world see the Queen's horse-mad daughter as a fairy-tale princess. How's the Princess going to top that for the actual wedding, I remember thinking. I'm not sure she did.

Freddy Mercury in the Zandra Rhodes wedding top he "fell in love with" in her studio.


Throughout the Seventies, Dame Zandra was at the apex of British fashion. So was Ossie Clark, although she considered him a rival rather than a friend. She doesn't seem particularly mad about Vivienne Westwood, that other great fashion survivor either. "I would just about say hello to her if I saw her and she would just about say hello to me. We don't have the same interests," says Dame Zandra with uncharacteristic terseness.

There are similarities between the two grandes dames, though. Both are tremendously talented, influential and inveterate self-publicists. But while Dame Zandra has a terrific sense of humour and an instinctive reflex to send herself up, Dame Vivienne is the relentlessly campaigning type. A dinner party involving both of them would probably be tetchy. Dame Zandra, too, seems to be more of a royal favourite. She often went to the palace to fit Diana ("very shy") and Princess Margaret, who would keep her waiting ("Plenty of snooping time"). HRH had a petit point cushion saying: "It's not easy being a princess". "She had humour. The maid would come in with a tea tray ... and one cup would already have tea in it, so it obviously had something else in it as well."

Dame Zandra used to go in for the spectacular fashion shows that, in hindsight she says, were a terrible strain. After a trip to see Diana Vreeland, the majestic editor-in-chief of US Vogue in 1969, she was feted in America. "And in Australia I became a household name. They flew me everywhere first class."

Her tiny atelier in west London worked like the clappers to keep up. When Freddie Mercury and Brian May rang to make an appointment, she had to explain that they could only come after hours, because there was no room for staff and visitors (she recreated the outfit Mercury chose for the recent biopic). After the visitation, she had to look up who they were, even though Queen were by then, 1973, well on their way.

Was she really forgotten in Europe? I felt so. "Remember all the fuss about Versace's punk collection in 1994? I did that back in 1977. We called it conceptual chic. When Suzy Menkes [then fashion critic at The Herald Tribune] pointed that out, Versace banned her from their show."

While Dame Zandra has a terrific sense of humour, Dame Vivienne is relentlessly campaigning. A dinner party would probably be tetchy.

Then there was the collection John Galliano did for Dior in the late Nineties that "borrowed" her prints. When someone as lauded for their innovation as Galliano references you, that gives you pause for thought. "What can you do? I used to try suing, but it gets you nowhere."

On the plus side - she is very glass half-full - when she felt she was being overlooked in favour of newer, shinier names, she decided she would become custodian of her own legacy. She has meticulously archived most of her work, thanks to which, the public will now be able to see the huge contribution she has made. Zandra Rhodes: 50 years of Fabulous opened recently at her museum.

Zandra Rhodes with Elton John in 1981.

Zandra Rhodes with Elton John in 1981.Credit:Syndication International

Behind the indelibly kooky shock of fuchsia hair, matching eyebrows, lips (Maybelline, she swears it stays on for 24 hours, not that she ever attempts to remove any of her make-up, preferring the ladle-more-on approach), and nails (more chipped than the Parthenon) lurks what she calls "a boringly sensible Virgo".

When MAC adopted her as a mascot in 2006, they were shocked that she never used any of their face creams: "I've always used soap and water. They said my face would drop off, but it hasn't yet."

And her work ethic is legendary. "Back in the Sixties and Seventies, when London was supposedly swinging and I was supposedly part of that, I'd go to the parties, but always left before midnight," she says.

She didn't smoke, because her mother - who taught sewing and pattern-cutting - died from lung cancer. "The irony is that because I was caught growing marijuana and it was all over the papers, I still have to get these very expensive visas to enter America. My father was so upset. That completely put me off drugs, I can tell you. But on the other hand, it really got me into gardening."

She loves a strong man. And a successful one. On dates, she would wear wigs so that people wouldn't recognise her and humiliate her male companion by asking for her autograph. Rather than pandering to the male ego, she regards this as pragmatic good manners. "Everyone says the Seventies were so sexist, but they're looking at it with the wrong perspective. I never noticed the sexism at the time." She does not call herself a feminist.

In Australia I became a household name. They flew me everywhere first class.

Zandra Rhodes

These aren't fashionable views, and she's not remotely bothered, partly I suspect, because fundamentally, she's socially progressive and always has been, and partly because, deep down, despite the Nineties blip, she's secure about her place in the world.

Five decades in, she's still in demand. Two years ago, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino's creative director, collaborated with her and this past summer Three Graces used her prints. Look at what women are wearing at the moment - long, floaty, feminine patterned dresses - and it's all Dame Zandra.

She has recently begun selling her collections in Liberty and on Matches Fashion Any moment now, she'll begin a project for Ikea, which will see Dame Zandra rolled out worldwide where she originally intended to be - in interiors. "The world could do with some Zandra colour, don't you think?" She's terrifically excited. No sign of stopping then? "What else would I do?"

Telegraph UK

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