Zandra Rhodes’ green leather datebook contains all the details and accolades of her working life — but it’s not as though she even gives that section a passing glance.
So numerous that they need to be printed in eye-straining 8-point text, the designer keeps a running list of honorary doctorates, the names of her collections and other business pursuits. But those are footnotes. Period.
“I don’t want to look back, I keep going forward,” she said. “I only look back when someone says, ‘Can we have an update for your CV? We need to know how many degrees you have or when you got your dameship.'”
Having divided her time between southern California and London for years, Rhodes was in New York Wednesday for the unveiling of her bespoke wall hangings at Christopher Guy’s showroom. André Leon Talley will help to celebrate the occasion with a question-and-answer session there Oct. 1. Inspired by drawings she did years ago of Guy Bourdin-photographed lipsticks and wallpapers for her Angelo Donghia, the wall hangings make Rhodes want to design furniture, though she is far from in need of new projects.
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She will soon be off to Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week to show her wearable silks there. And like her friend Andrew Logan, Rhodes has developed art for what will be augmented reality-enriched installations in the Mumbai International Airport. “There’s another bit where you run your hand through water and music plays,” she said of the multiartist work. “It’s really incredible because you spend so much time at an airport and it’s not just a shopping spree — it’s an art experience.”
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Earlier this month she returned to London Fashion Week with a runway show and this spring she was in Bangladesh for her ongoing collaboration with Peopletree. A documentary about her life is being shot by a filmmaker who captured a 1981 fashion show she had at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla. Rhodes said, “Half the time I do things to [purely] do it. And then at some point, it will sort itself out and it will give you an answer.”
“I like to think that at some time, even when I’m pushing up the daisies, that what I’ve done will become an empire like Chanel,” she said. “But it needs someone to come along and run it better than I run it. You need someone to take off and run with it. I think I’m sort of an artist on the world of fashion. It requires someone who can really take it in an amazing way.”
But Rhodes isn’t in talks with anyone. “No, no, no — at the moment. I’m just like, ‘Get this job done,'” pretending to clear a jungle path with her arms. “I just know how to come up with the ideas.”
She will present her Enchanted Forest fashion show at the Westgate Hotel Oct. 22 to benefit the Fashion and Textile Museum that she started in London. The pink-and-orange Ricardo Legoreta-designed building is about to introduce an exhibition about Liberty London. And the neighborhood has sprung up significantly, thanks to The Shard. “It’s the height of chic — well, it’s the view of London until they build something higher of course,” she said. “The museum is only a hop, skip and jump away, so everything has become really lively over there, which is wonderful.”
The designer is also on to final fittings for the costumes she has designed for the Seattle Opera. That is another city that has seen great commercial expansion, with “the badges” covering the streets — the nickname for Amazon.com’s badge-wearing staffers.
Rhodes’ own unmistakable style marker — a hot-pink hairstyle — is now accepted by the masses, something that was unimaginable when she met with a Revlon executive in 1973 about the prospect of developing Zandra Rhodes-colored hair dye. The designer said, “The person said, ‘Forgive me for saying this, but people with colored hair used to be considered very strange,'” Rhodes chuckled. “Now I’m seeing people with gorgeous blue hair, green hair, tints….so things change. You never know. You can never tell. Something can happen and the whole world changes.”
First and foremost a textiles designer, Rhodes started designing her own clothes when challenged that her textiles were far too extreme. That interest traces back to her own mother who taught fashion and worked as a fitter at the House of Worth in Paris before she was married. “It’s a matter of having to market the ideas. To me, it isn’t a matter of having the ideas. You have to turn them into things. You have to have someone willing to display them and fell they look right. Otherwise, you’re hitting your head against the wall.”
Although she hasn’t met the Duchess of Cambridge, Rhodes designed clothes for Princess Diana, whom she described as “very shy.” “In fittings at the palace, she’d say, ‘I can’t have a wrap dress that daring, because you can guarantee when I get out of the car, there will be a photographer waiting to get a picture right up my skirt.’ So she tried to think of everything like that,” said Rhodes, agreeing Diana tried to guard her children against the media. “And I think it paid off. Princess Kate has managed to run the gauntlet quite well in terms of navigating the media without offending them or making too much publicity.”
Off-hours (not that there are many), she listens to audiobooks, NPR, BBC and cooks and entertains friends to be close to her partner Salah Hassanein, a former Warner Bros. president. The couple’s 6 a.m. weekend walks in Torrey Pines Natural Reserve led to another artistic pursuit, the makings of a children’s book inspired by Cicely Mary Barker’s “Flower Fairies.” Rhodes is sketching Californian flowers and her sister is penning the poems. The designer said she also adores her camellia-laden penthouse terrace garden outside of her rainbow-colored London apartment. “David Bailey asked me to do a dress for Paloma Picasso and I took the dress to Paris. The camellias were all out and I was given one,” she said. “Now, I have these 60-year-old camellias on my terrace on one side. And there is one wall painted Frida Kahlo-blue which has white hydrangeas against it.”
The Christopher Guy experience has made her want to design wallpaper again, something she first did for Angelo Donghia, whom she befriended during her first New York trip in 1969. They used to weekend together with Halston on Fire Island. “In those days, I had the wiggle-red hairline and the head scarfs were flowing,” Rhodes said. “Angelo hosted a show for me at his Upper East Side townhouse with Pat Cleveland and Lulu de la Falaise modeling. That was before Lulu went to Saint Laurent. I think Bill Cunningham’s still got pictures of it.”
She remains connected to her past by taking the occasional sketching trip with Logan or talking art with her college friend David Hockney. And she still designs the women’s costumes for Logan’s Alternative Miss World event. “This year it was at The Globe, which was quite fabulous — Shakespeare’s Globe,” she said.
With the 40th anniversary of punk coming up, Rhodes, who is known as the “Princess of Punk,” will be popping up at a few special events. The fact that some still link her to the more flamboyant costumes she designed for Freddie Mercury “before he turned into the black T-shirt thing,” Rhodes said, “it’s better if they remember and like some of the things you do, than totally forget what you do.”
More than anything, she said, “I think in life, if people like your work and remember what you do and want to live with it, that’s the luck and achievement.”