Fashion’s magpie brings her colourful designs back in style
Zandra Rhodes is off to a southwestern England festival, where the designer will be the main attraction of Zandra Land, the site of a talk, print master class and fashion show of her new collection for Matchesfashion.com, all staged in a facsimile of her flat.
The original sits atop the Fashion and Textile Museum that Rhodes calls “the rainbow penthouse” — after the colour spectrum that waves across its walls and floors. Her decorating philosophy is magpie chic, with sequins, mirrored mosaics, Z-shaped side tables, cacti and sparkling bric-a-brac in abundance. Tying all the ebullience together is a colour: Zandra Pink, the nearly neon hue that’s been her hair colour since 1980.
“Colour makes me happy,” Rhodes says. “You can always paint it or change it if you decide it isn’t right.”
Rhodes designed some of the most energetic British fashion of the past 50 years, having opened her London first shop in 1969. She took her collection to New York in 1970 and found fast support from American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (“an overwhelming, amazing lady”).
As fashion’s general mood has ventured away from minimalism, it’s turned back toward Rhodes. The renewed love affair started with Matches’s release of several reissued designs under the Zandra Rhodes Archive label in September 2016.
“There are so many women who are huge fans of her designs and wanted to invest in one of her dresses,” says Natalie Kingham, buying director at Matches Fashion.
Asked if she sees the world in a different way, Rhodes pauses. “I can only contribute what’s me. And if it isn’t me, if I started to look like someone else, then people would walk by. I just have to hope that people go along with my way of thinking, that I have customers that come back, understanding that some will say, ‘No, I’m not in that mood any more.’” But what a mood to be in.