Dame Zandra Rhodes: ‘British people always manage to push their way through: We just have to fight’
The fashion designer’s new memoir is a cathartic self-examination of her life and career in objects.
When the British fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes looked back over her life, finding an engaging and evocative way to tell the wild tale meant only one thing: offering up her possessions.
Self-confessed hoarder and famed for her brilliantly bright hair and equally bold printed designs; Rhodes, 83, is synonymous with Sixties style, having dressed icons from Diana, Princess of Wales to Jackie Kennedy and Freddie Mercury.
Her new memoir, entitled Iconic: My Life in 50 Objects, explores these unlikely relationships, alongside family dynamics and romantic pursuits through her most treasured objects.
Childhood Jacqueline doll
‘Mummy dressed to the nines in the most extraordinary clothes, which I hated because other people noticed her,’ notes Rhodes. The designer’s initial aversion to being noticed may seem odd to some, but it’s what helped build who she is.
“I used to ask her not to look so different from all the other mothers,” says Rhodes, “but those are the things that lead you to the fact that you’ll experiment with yourself later in life. It must have been the influence of my mother in the background to everything.”
The first piece of clothing Rhodes ever made was for her Jacqueline doll, no doubt influenced by her mother’s avant-garde style. When ruminating on regrets that surfaced upon putting the book together, Rhodes declared she had none, but said the most difficult subject to write on was her father. “I felt that I considered him unfairly – because he was a bit of what you call a rough diamond – a bit like Alf Garnett,” she says.
“I think children are terrible snobs. I felt he could have advanced himself more and he didn’t.”
Rhodes felt the influence of her mother more heavily, who always encouraged her work, whereas her father never mentioned it. “It’s only later in life listening to someone like my sister who said ‘oh he was always talking about you’ that I realised he did take an interest.
“I wasn’t close to him and it’s been very cathartic [writing the book] – a self-examination of myself by examining my different relationships and going along in life.”
Knitted Landscape ScarfIntegral to her work, Rhodes speaks of colour as though it’s often considered with disdain, saying she is drawn to colours that are ‘criticised for being too bright – too much’, ‘garish’, and that she has ‘no desire to make things compliment each other: life should be interesting, not tasteful.’
The Knitted Landscape Scarf was part of her first solo collection in 1969. The piece encompasses enigmatic swirls and a whimsical use of colour, “My first choice is always the brighter colourway. We all have to make the choice of what we can live by,” says Rhodes, “If it was all beige I think I wouldn’t feel as lively.
“Surroundings have more of an impact than you probably think,” she explains, “I remember painting my bedroom all black and one couldn’t get up in the morning and it was terrible it got changed very quickly! We all have to live by things that make us keep going and feel better and my pink hair makes me feel better in the morning.”
Princess Diana’s watercolour sketch
‘One wet day in the early spring of 1981, two twenty-something women walked into my Mayfair shop and changed the profile of my brand for ever,’ Rhodes recounts. Lady Diana Spencer and Sarah Ferguson were firm friends. Despite having dressed royals such as Princess Margaret and Princess Anne already, Rhodes suspected the demure-looking Diana would find her style ‘a bit much.’ Perhaps on this occasion she was right as Diana did buy a dress – but for Sarah, not herself.
Yet, five years later in 1986, Diana revisited Rhodes’ shop and tried on an off-the-shoulder dress from the designer’s 1985 ‘India Revisited’ collection. The late princess requested to have it remade in a pink chiffon, and so Rhodes drew up a watercolour of the dress, which Diana went on to wear that same year.
This is the object that changed the path of her working life. Despite being 46 and having already sustained an incredibly successful career up until this point, having the late Princess of Wales wear one of Rhodes’ dresses crystallised the designer as an icon of fashion history.
This object represents hope – something many fear is lost for the younger generations of today. “I think young persons will always have aspirations,” says Rhodes, “The trick is to not give up and find new pathways. The new pathways won’t be what we knew but maybe they’ll be better in the end.
“I think there’s something about British people always managing to push their way through. It happened in the Sixties and it will happen again. We just have to fight.”
Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects by Ella Alexander and Zandra Rhodes is published by Bantam, priced at £25. Available now.
