Lady in pink
Britain’s best known designer, Rhodes gives Anjuli Bhargava a peek into her extraordinary life
Lo, and as I log into Zoom on my laptop, I have a sight to behold. With her hot pink mop of hair, egg-sized beads and strings that swallow up her neckline, her psychedelic prints that metamorphose into outfits that few can comprehend and even fewer can pull off, she is quite unlike anyone I have ever come across.
Words like “flamboyant” and “outlandish” fall short when describing Dame Zandra Lindsey Rhodes, now 80. To say that she is not the typical Coffee with BS candidate would be an understatement. But then she’s not the usual fare anywhere, commercial success notwithstanding.
It takes me a few minutes to absorb her and her surroundings. She sits in her vibrant rainbow penthouse, atop the British Fashion and Textile museum in an artsy district in London. She has her cup of morning coffee and I am with my glass of water in Dehradun, thinking what I wouldn’t give to exchange places.
Rhodes grew up in a middle-income home outside London with a father who was a lorry driver and a mother who taught dressmaking at the local college, managing to inculcate a sense of aesthetic in her daughter that would define her future. As a student, she’d toyed with becoming an illustrator but a textile design teacher at her art school saw potential in her and said if she worked hard, she’d help her get into the Royal College of Art in London.
She did end up studying textile design at the Royal College, and once she discovered “the magic of fabric and how it could transform the human shape”, she couldn’t keep her hands off it. Even so, it took her “a minimum of 10 years to become an overnight success,” she laughs. From 1963 to 1969, she taught, experimented with a few projects and struggled like many creative types appear fated to.
It was in 1969-70, when she made her way to New York and Vogue carried photos of her collection on Natalie Wood, the film star, that Rhodes was catapulted into another stratosphere. From that point on, her designs and dresses became quite the rage — in the Americas in particular.
Although her order book was filled with the bold and the beautiful — from royalty (Princess Diana) to rock stars (Freddie Mercury) — it was a long time before Rhodes herself reaped the rewards of success. She lived “hand to mouth” while quintupling up as a salesman, cutter, designer, hand finisher and delivery boy (!) — she only had a machinist — adding that the “name” was far bigger than the actual enterprise. Neither of her parents lived to witness the extraordinary success she eventually became.
She stumbled upon India at the behest of designer and art curator Rajeev Sethi and Pupul Jayakar — “a very grand lady” — in 1987 when they sought her out to collaborate with them for the first Festival of India. Her first visit to the country, a whirlwind Kashmir to Kanyakumari type of trip where she visited every spot that produced any textile worth its salt, left her wanting more. The warp and weft of the Indian weavers and the exquisite endproduct they created ensured that she fell in love with the most versatile of India’s garments: The sari, inspiring her next collection that showed at London’s Fashion Week at Pillar Hall with models in saris, plaits and blue make-up. She herself posed as a blue Indian god for the show’s posters.
Thereon, Rhodes whizzed in and out of India, judging a Miss India contest, designing a section of the Mumbai airport terminal, setting up an embroidery workshop in Mumbai, landing in Puducherry for a Real Marigold hotel travel show, holding shows in Delhi and Mumbai of a sari collection designed by her. India, I learn, is on her travel map again, this time with her sister — as soon as the pandemic is over.
India, and its deep, abiding influence, is evident in her home. It both looms large and peppers several corners in the gigantic sun-drowned space. In a corner, there’s a 10-ft mirror sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi with a map of India, embellished at the bottom with lots of Indian memorabilia by her friend, sculptor Andrew Logan. She zooms in to show me an exquisite little blue Indian god kneeling on a table. Behind her is a carved screen from an ashram in South India standing next to a life-size photograph of herself.
In 1995, Zandra switched tracks and decided to do her bit to promote British textiles and designers. Up popped a hot pink and burnt orange building in Bermondsey, owned by her and designed jointly with renowned Mexican architect, the late Ricardo Legorreta — his first and only structure in Europe to promote British fashion and textiles. She argues that all too often the designer gets all the credit and the “Cinderellas” of the business — weavers or creators of the textile — remain in the shadows. The structure, in a fashionable London district, has turned into a tourist attraction on account of its extraordinary colour scheme.
So distracted am I by it that I interrupt her to ask about her hair. Why and how did she decide to go pink? In 1970, she got to know British hairdresser Leonard Lewis, famously known as Leonard of Mayfair, and she did what came to her most naturally: experimenting with her hair — streaks, colours, dyes, feathers, everything and anything. But it was a trip to China in 1979 — where she saw no makeup, no colour and everyone dressed in army uniform or navy blue — that finally got her goat. She came back home, did a new collection named “Red China” and dyed her hair bright pink. The rest, as they say, is history.
Our chat turns to the pandemic. I ask how she sees the world of fashion altered post it: Will people forget and carry on, or will there be a recalibration? She expects things to change quite radically; a “scaling down” of the industry is inevitable and, to her mind, very desirable. She’s not certain how things will evolve, but she doesn’t think it’s going to be “spend, spend, spend” going forward. “If we are to keep the world going as we know it, we have to do it differently.”
Doing it differently is her area of expertise — she once landed at Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen with a large egg embellished on her head. For now, she’s busy putting the finishing touches on the Zandra Rhodes Foundation, an institution that will preserve her legacy. I want to laugh out loud. Who can forget her? If there are a few words I’d associate most closely with her, they’d be “unforgettable”, “immortal” — and “pink”!
She may be going on 81, but Rhodes retains every bit of a child in her. As I express keen interest in her surroundings, she eagerly lifts her laptop and takes me on a tour of her living space — a vast expanse of glass windows, artwork, pottery (lots of Kate Malone), psychedelic colours and sunlight. My attention is briefly caught by a life-size mannequin standing in a corner wearing one of her stark pink creations, but it pales in comparison to the real thing. When Dame Zandra Rhodes is in a room, she pretty much fills it.
She expects things to change quite radically; a “scaling down” of the industry is inevitable and, to her mind, very desirable