The colour hits you like a galaxy of fireworks: a cosmic overload of crimson, aquamarine, fuchsia, vermilion, green, pink, purple, glints of silver, gold and copper, dazzling, popping and fizzing on floors, furniture and walls. And that’s before you’ve even seen Zandra Rhodes herself, who bursts like a meteor onto the colourful vista that is her Rainbow Penthouse in southeast London’s Bermondsey, above the Fashion and Textile Museum, which she opened in 2003. The signature thatch of pink hair sits atop two arches of turquoise eyeshadow that are as iridescent as dragonfly wings. She steps neatly over two vast polystyrene lion faces, props from one of the operas she designed the costumes for, which are now destined for pride of place on her balcony terrace-garden.
Tribal beads and mirrored brooches festoon her cyclamen mohair cardigan, and a Rajasthani silver warrior belt is slung around her troubadour trousers. Bizarre would be an understatement. She resembles some fantastical fashion fairy who has waved her wand, releasing a shower of rainbow dust. Like her face and her fabrics, any surface is a canvas, waiting to be painted, decorated and embellished.
Her 50-years-and-counting career sounds like a trip on The Who’s “Magic Bus”, with stops whenever, wherever anything was happening – the Swinging Sixties, psychedelia, flower power, punk, Kensington Palace, glam rock, Hollywood, medievalism, the red carpet, royalty, New Romantics, Indian mysticism.
Diana Princess of Wales, Cher, Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, Donna Summer, Joan Rivers, Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Debbie Harry, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave… the names of just some who have been dressed by British fashion’s dame of dazzle – a roll call of the famous and the fabulous.
Rhodes’ memories of her half-century in fashion were brought into sharp focus once again during lockdown three. In 2019, she marked her milestone with a book, Zandra Rhodes: 50 Fabulous Years in Fashion. Now, she is in the process of cataloguing her vast archive. She has kept a copy of every design, every catwalk outfit – an estimated total of 15,000 – stored in metal trunks. So far, 4,000 original outfits have been documented, several of which have been photographed by Rankin for HUNGER. Extraordinary interpretations of 1960s/1970s Rhodes-style hair and make-up by Nick Irwin and Andre Gallimore lend a 21st-century twist to the looks.
Rhodes has long been a pioneer. She painted her face before Ziggy – “I never met David Bowie.” She used safety pins way before punk and the Sex Pistols, hence her nickname, the Princess of Punk. And she revolutionised the concept of printed textiles by creating them to dictate the silhouette.
She grew up in Chatham, Kent; her father was a lorry driver, her mother a dressmaker and fitter at the House of Worth, who taught dressmaking and pattern-cutting at Rochester College of Art (now known as the University for the Creative Arts). “My mother was my biggest influence. When I think back, she was very exotic. I used to say to her, when she was coming to open days at my first school, ‘Don’t dress up too extreme,’ because she didn’t look like all the other mothers.
“My first memory of colour… It would be… I remember when my mother made clothes for me. I had a very nice turquoise seersucker skirt printed with fishes. In fact, it was a whole turquoise outfit.” Do you think that’s what inspired the turquoise eyeshadow? “Could be.”
After school, Rhodes studied first at Medway and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (RCA) to study textile design. “This is where it all really solidified for me. It was a three-year course and the woman who taught textile design was totally inspirational. In my second year, I had a kind of epiphany. I fell in love with creating textiles for garments. I didn’t want to do dramatic designs for curtains and wallpaper. It wasn’t really anything to do with fashion. I realised I just wanted to create textiles. I loved colour. I loved drawing.”
Rhodes remains an inveterate sketcher, rarely setting forth without her sketchbook and a clutch of Pentels, “All the colours. I draw anything and everything, the ordinary things you see every day. It might be a knobbly old tree, a patch of moss, a teacup on a tray, some intricate cracks in the pavement. Whatever catches my eye.”
Whatever it may be, cow parsley spotted from the window of a train, a garlic bulb, a cactus, the leaves of a cabbage, it is drawn with forensic, almost botanical precision. “It doesn’t always turn into a design. It’s more of a visual memory. I may come upon it years later and it will be an inspiration.”
Her early designs, swirling geometrics, and vivid floral motifs, screenprinted on chiffon, were a revelation. After she graduated from the RCA, her designs were picked up by Foale and Tuffin – “They were considered to be the queens of Carnaby Street” – but most British brands considered her work too outrageous and weren’t sure how to translate her kaleidoscopic creations into fashion.
Undeterred, Rhodes became what is known as a “convertor” – “I drew all the artwork, I helped make the screens.” A pioneer of wearable art, she began designing the clothes as well, since only she understood how her textile prints dictated the shape of the garment. “It was important to me how they hung, so the designs were seen to best advantage, like a painting on a wall.”
In 1966, bolstered with investment from a quartet of fans, including Redgrave, Rhodes opened her first shop, The Fulham Road Clothes Shop, with co-designer Sylvia Ayton. By now, she was printing on wool felt and calico, as well as chiffon, and her work was attracting widespread attention, being photographed by British Vogue and picked up by celebrities.
Next stop America. Armed with a letter of introduction to Diana Vreeland, the venerable editor of US Vogue, Rhodes set forth with a suitcase of her designs, her head swathed in scarves and black squiggles painted down each cheek. The pair clicked, DV, her cheeks painted red, no doubt delighted to meet a fellow face-paint devotee. “It was quite extraordinary. She kept saying, ‘Marvellous, marvellous.’ Then she picked up the telephone, called Henri Bendel, and told me that I had to go and show them my clothes.”
Rhodes’ New York visit also fortuitously coincided with a feature on her in Women’s Wear Daily, accompanied by a photograph taken by David Bailey, while Vreeland also arranged for her designs to be photographed on Natalie Wood for US Vogue. “That was it, and for the next 10 years I was back and forth from London to America. They took to my clothes.”
Back in London, the Fulham Road clothes shop had closed and Rhodes was able to open, in Grafton Street, W1, the first shop under her own name, backed by the fashion brand Ronnie Stirling. This became the template for a series of ZR in-store boutiques in major US cities, while her cult dresses, coats and jackets were soon joined by a collection of equally cult lingerie. “When I look back now, it amazes me. I often think, how did all this happen to me? I didn’t sit down and say this is how my career is going to go. I knew I didn’t want to teach. I wanted to do my work, by hook or by crook. Oscar de la Renta wanted me to work for him, but I wanted to do my textiles. I wanted my name on them.”
The signature Zandra Rhodes look, theatrical and extravagant, is a natural for the stage, so it is no surprise she has been commissioned to design costumes for opera, including The Magic Flute, Aida, and The Pearl Fishers, staged variously in San Diego, Houston, New York and at ENO in London.
Her sense of curiosity and desire to expand her reach have also led to numerous collaborations. Recently launched are her Happy Socks, in riotous gold and pink, and featuring the familiar squiggle. She also launched a range of bed upholstery with the bedding brand Savoir. In 2016, she was commissioned by Pierpaolo Piccioli to design a series of prints, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, for his solo debut as creative director of Valentino. She has also created archive-inspired capsule collections, for both designer brands and the high street, such as Topshop, Marks & Spencer and MatchesFashion.
Her most ambitious collaboration to date will launch internationally in September, a 20-plus piece collection for IKEA of soft furnishings called KARISMATISK inspired by her Rainbow Penthouse. She is also currently putting the finishing touches to a new, hush-hush ready-to-wear range in collaboration with a major, high-end high street name, which will be launched in July.
Despite her dislike of teaching, she has not turned her back on education. She is a life patron of the Graduate Fashion Foundation/ Graduate Fashion Week and is chancellor emerita of the University for the Creative Arts, where she studied and her mother taught. In addition, there is her new Zandra Rhodes Charitable Foundation, based at the Fashion and Textile Museum, which will manage her archive and provide a study resource for graduates for decades to come. The next 50 years are getting off to a bright start.
