Her unique designs have been at the forefront of fashion for six decades, and A-list names still clamour to wear Dame Zandra Rhodes’s creations.
Indeed, the week before HELLO! interviews the legendary designer, Kendall Jenner had been sent a particular dress she had admired after Courtney Love wore the label in a magazine.
The 85-year-old fashion icon, who was made a dame in 2014, counts the late Diana, Princess of Wales, the Princess Royal and Cher among her previous clients, so she is sure to deliver a highly entertaining talk when she discusses her career in front of a live audience at the Goodwood Revival on 20 September.
“I’m sharing anecdotes with [the creative consultant] Dandy Wellington, so I think it’ll be good fun,” she says.
“I will probably talk about dressing Freddie Mercury in the early Seventies and then perhaps I will discuss how, when Lauren Bacall came to my funny little studio, she stepped on a pin, and I was down on my floor trying to extricate it from her famous foot.”
Zandra has been to the three-day event – which celebrates classic motorcars and the vintage style of the Forties and Fifties – before, describing it as “great fun”.
“What with all the antique cars and everyone getting into the whole mood, it’s quite electric. It’s just a step back in time, really. Everyone gets dressed up and they bounce along and look so proud.”
© Samir Hussein/WireImageIt’s highly likely many will be wearing some vintage Zandra Rhodes – after all, she has been creating clothes, textiles and jewellery since the Sixties, and her designs are in high demand at fashion institutions around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey, London, which she founded in 2003.
She and her team have been working hard on archiving her work over the last few years, and she is immensely proud of an exhibition of her clothes at De Montfort University in Leicester at the end of September.
“I enjoy looking through my collection to help with the archives and exhibitions,” she says. “They’re wonderful memories.”
© Alamy Stock PhotoWhile she loves hearing about her celebrity fans, she also adores hearing stories of anyone finding joy in her creations.
“There was a bride the other week that managed to find one of my dresses. It’s a wonderful compliment. I dressed Princess Diana – everyone always remembers that – and we made Princess Anne’s dress when announced her engagement; she looked like a real fairy princess.”
Referencing the Princess of Wales, she adds: “I could make something for Kate, and it would look good. Maybe she might be going to some antique event in the palace and I could do something.”
Zandra is proud of still working ten-hour days.
“No!” she says when asked if she has any plans to retire, adding that she’ll do so “only if I can’t move anymore”.
© Getty ImagesTo that end, following a diagnosis of bile-duct cancer in 2020, she says her health is now “perfect”. “They inject me with some magic immunotherapy every six weeks which keeps the cancer at bay. I’m still here.”
But her health challenges made her reassess the legacy she wants to leave behind.
“I think if it hadn’t happened, I’d have kept working away but not thought about what’s going to happen to everything. Whereas now, we’re systematically trying to think of what happens to my designs.
“It gives me self-satisfaction that my work was important.”
Dame Zandra Rhodes will be appearing in conversation with Dandy Wellington on Sunday 20 September at Goodwood Revival presented by Dunlop. Tickets are available from goodwood.com
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