Zandra Rhodes: the joy of turning 80
Anyone who knows Zandra Rhodes will describe her as one of the most energetic and interested people you'll ever meet. Her colourful life (and really there are few who approach rainbow shades with such committed enthusiasm) has seen her move from textiles to fashion, dressing some of the world's most stylish, from Diana, Princess of Wales and Freddie Mercury to Sarah Jessica Parker and Debbie Harry. She also established the Fashion & Textiles Museum in London, above which she lives in a penthouse filled with colour, and in 2014 was made a dame by the Queen, an occasion marked with a party in which she sat on a velvet throne.
As she celebrates her 80th birthday on Saturday, 19 September, Rhodes looks back on what she's learnt along the road, from the true definition of style to what it really takes to make a long-term relationship work. Happy birthday to the sunniest and most exuberant octogenarian in fashion.
To be stylish is to have personality. It doesn’t have to link to the latest thing in fashion, it’s about how you put yourself together - your panache. It’s about adding a personal touch to something. Style doesn’t have to relate to fashion. It can, but it doesn’t have to. If you have style, you can influence fashion. Take someone like Anna Piaggi or Diana Vreeland, they had their own strong style that then became a fashion. They had style; it became the fashion later.
In the future, style is going to be more important than ever. We have to think of the world that’s left – we must curb our expenditure and instead think about how we put things together. Everything has to change.
The fashion industry has grown and because of Covid-19, it will be trimmed down to be a more manageable beast. We can’t run away with the world’s resources. We must put our panache on what we can use safely. It doesn’t mean all businesses need to close, but we can’t ask people to spend, spend, spend all the time. we all need to be more inventive. We must think our way round what’s left in the world, rather than use up more.
I’ve learnt that change happens without even knowing you’ve changed. Suddenly you do your make-up differently or you’ve pushed your hair in a different direction. I wouldn’t be seen dead without make-up. After I’ve washed my face in the morning, make-up is the essential. I don’t feel me without it, and I have to feel me somehow.
The older I’ve grown the better I understand the importance of friendship. I speak to my friends every day. Even during lockdown, they were there. You need people you can tell that you feel fed-up, people who you don’t need to pretend around. You can’t always be on a high. One hopes you have friends that are good enough to tell you when you’re wrong or if you’re wearing something that looks terrible. I suppose the more you get to know people, the more they get to know you. They understand better how you might respond to something, and what makes you tick. It’s terribly important to have friends of different ages. Some of my friends are much younger than me, they might have been interns of mine at some point, but they bring something new to my life.
Remember that happiness spreads. If you’re a happy person, you tend to see a lot of other happy people. If you’re down, you’ll attract that. Like attracts like. If you need a boost, think about colour. I look at all this colour in my rainbow home. Colour cheers your life up. Years ago, I was given the challenge for a Daily Mail piece to wear black for a week. I found it extremely difficult to make myself feel interesting just wearing black. It was terribly boring. You can put colour on and it feels jolly.
If you can, find a job that makes you happy. I don’t know what I’d do without work and I’m lucky that I’ve got to 80 and people still want what I do. I haven’t ended up on the fashion shelf. The worst thing is having too much time on your hands. If you’ve got too much to do, you can be a little bogged down by it, but you exist, and it’ll keep you going. It’s important to keep your mind active. It’s better to have masses to do and not know how you’ll do them, than to have masses of time on your hands and not know what to do with it. That would be the worst thing I can think of. If I sit still, I might as well just rot and die. I’ve never been a balanced person. I’m not balanced in anything I do. Perhaps balance will strike me one day, but it hasn’t yet. Perhaps imbalance has kept me feeling young enough to do all the things I want to do.
I had an amazing mother who was a very strong character. She told me not to worry about what people thought. When I decided, as a textiles designer, to become a fashion designer, people asked me, ‘but how will you make dresses? You’re not trained as a dress designer.’ In my head, I knew the designs that I was creating would be best suited to dresses, so I took no notice. It was the only way I knew to make a living. Have confidence in yourself. I had my mother’s will power inside me. I didn’t realise that my clothes would become as popular as they did, that Princess Diana or Freddie Mercury would wear them. You don’t always know. All I knew was that I didn’t want to teach and that I liked designing. Uncertainty is nothing to be afraid of.
If you’re in a conventional life, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you are living that way and you feel trapped, then do something that might lead the way to a different route. When I started out, I taught twice a week. I didn’t like it, but it enabled me to fashion design. If you’re not happy with your life, then fit in something you’d like to do - push something you believe in. That little speck might just lead somewhere.
When it comes to love, well, there have been numerous boyfriends that I’d care to forget. A happy relationship requires mutual respect. My last boyfriend, who I was with for 25-30 years before he passed away last year, was a self-made workaholic and was always working. His children used to laugh because we were so similar. He’d get on with his work and I’d get on with mine. Respect is so important. I used to say he had as much taste in his whole body as I do in my smallest fingernail. When we had a house together, he’d query all my interiors choices. In the end, I decided that I’d be in charge of the bedroom where I did what I liked. You have to reach a stage where you can compromise. You have to allow the other person to grow. They must have room to do what they want to do.
Spend as much time as you can with family. My mother was a wonderful driving force who led to my success. She was a fabulous tower of strength, but I worked a lot. Both my sister and I have a lot of her in us. Your mother might influence you more than you know.
I’m not sure if I know what contentment means yet. I’m always dealing with change and how to get things done. It seems to me that time is getting shorter and shorter, and I still have so much to do. Darling, I was young so long ago, I can’t barely remember it, but I don’t miss having relationships that were wrong. The formative position is difficult, but I don’t want to forget it. All of it, so far, has been wonderful.
As told to Ella Alexander.
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