Zandra Rhodes (born in Chatham, Kent in 1940) is a fashion and textile designer and founder of the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. Known for her bold, extravagant use of color and print, she has dressed some of the most famous members of the royal family and pop culture, from Princess Diana to Debbie Harry. Rhodes has appeared in Absolutely Fabulous and won a Daytime Emmy Award for Costume Design in 1979. Her memoir, Iconic, has recently been published.
Make-up artists are good to make you blossom, and my good friend Richard Sharah was great at that. I’m wearing a dress I designed after a trip I took through America in a Volkswagen camper in 1974. It was beautiful; and inspired my Cactus Cowboy collection. A beautiful time in my life.
I first started dyeing my hair in 1973. When Vidal Sassoon came out with colored wigs, I tried them, but they pinched my head. Instead, I realized I could dye it myself: it was green – like the color of dried grass – pink and blue. I only dyed it brown once, but it stayed in for two weeks because I found the experience so terribly embarrassing. Pink doesn’t require much maintenance, so that’s why it stayed that color.
My mother, Beatrice, was a dresser like no other. She had a passion for style and once worked as a pattern designer for the couture brand House of Worth. She would pick me up from school dressed to the nines. I would say, “Please don’t come any different than all the other mothers.” She always did. One time she sprayed her hair silver and then she got a lacquer to hold it in place. We were on the train and she kept saying, “My head is getting stuck.” It turned out she had sprayed her head with fly spray.
She was a teacher at Medway College of Art, so I was allowed to try on dramatic clothes there, but I didn’t dare wear them in front of the other children at my school. I didn’t have many friends when I was young – I was a very dull child; always working hard. Everyone in our house was like that; always busy, rushing around. We weren’t a family that relaxed.
Being called Zandra was always embarrassing. Teachers thought it was a mistake in their register. They said, “That name doesn’t exist!” Still, I loved school. Even when I was at home, I was always painting or illustrating something. While Mom was at the sewing machine, I was upstairs designing clothes for my doll, Jacqueline. The first was a multi-colored dress, hand-stitched with striped piping. It was important that Jacqueline always looked neat.
In the early 60s I studied at the Royal College of Art and was encouraged by my tutors to try and sell my designs. The feedback I got from buyers was that my style was too bold compared to what was happening at the time. I made bright, colourful designs, an early interpretation of pop art. I didn’t take the setbacks personally. My wonderful mother always said I would make it.
The turning point in my life was when I went to America with my collection and showed it to others [fashion editor] Diana Vreeland at American Vogue. She raved about it; the tide turned in a new direction. After that, my whole life changed.
I spent a lot of the 70s in New York promoting my designs. I had no social life in London – I was always in my studio – so to suddenly be part of this wild social scene was completely new. Where I had once been so disciplined, I was at all-night raves or crazy discos. I would probably get in at 1am, but that was still quite late for me, especially if I had been up early to work.
I had never heard of Queen, but Freddie was very shy and sweet; not like an unapproachable rock god. He told me he wanted to look like a showman
It was a great experience to be at the Factory. Andy Warhol was in his office, full of Karl Lagerfeld’s extravagant furniture, and poets and artists were always hanging around. I was wearing very dramatic make-up and had streaked hair with feathers tied at the ends; a scarf around my head. It was around this time that Richard took me to the studio of his friend, the interior designer Angelo Donghia. He saw me and said, “Well, if you dress so exotically, I’d like to see your work.” He bought my textile designs, which I didn’t sell in the UK. It was like riding a wave.
I must have been in my mid-30s when Diana Ross threatened to crush me under her garage door. I had been introduced to her when I was in London and wearing my best clothes. A year later I was in LA, driving with a friend, and she said, “Look, that’s Diana Ross getting out of a car and walking into her house. You know her! Go say hi!” Diana took one look at this vision of a woman with green hair, sort of like a hippie, and said, “If you come one step closer, I’m going to close this door on you.” I ran back to the car. Friends woke me up the next day to tell me that Diana had noticed it was me, found out where I was staying, and called in the middle of the night to say she wanted to come over for breakfast. She came and had coffee and a bite to eat. It was a really funny experience.
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My meeting with Freddie Mercury was really great. It was 1974 and he and Brian May were coming to visit me in my studio. I had never heard of Queen but Freddie was very shy and sweet; not like some unapproachable rock god. He told me he wanted to look like a showman and I picked out a white pleated bridal top that I thought would suit him. It was heavy ivory silk and had huge butterfly sleeves. I went on to design the top to measure and he wore it when Queen performed later that year.
Although I was never intimidated by a star, I did have the horrible experience of dressing Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was like a kitten when you put the clothes on her, but as soon as the men left the room she said, “I hate this dress.” I met her many years later and asked if she had given all my dresses to her daughter and she said, “No, darling, I love it so much.” I thought, “What happened to what you did to me? You brought my staff to tears.” It was all very strange.
Right at the beginning From Covid, my good friend, the artist Andrew Logan was in my house. He said, “Zandy, you never do yoga. Why don’t you try it?” We were lying on the floor and he told me to take deep breaths. I did as he said and felt like my stomach was full, even though I hadn’t eaten all day. It turned out I had a 13.5cm tumor in my bile duct and I was told I had six months to live. I told three people about my cancer; my biggest concern was that I wouldn’t be able to get all my work done.
About nine months later, the growth was gone. I still get treatments every few weeks; and I don’t breathe as well as I used to. Other than that, nothing has changed. I like to think I still have a hint of the exotic about me, although I don’t wear my own dress designs very often. When I’m in the studio, I wear an old pair of pants, an old T-shirt, maybe a brooch. I don’t want any distractions; rips or paint on something pretty. I just want to get back to work.