I’ve had pink hair since 1980 and before that I had dyed green hair. When I got together with my boyfriend in the mid-nineties, I thought I’d have a stab at looking a bit normal so I dyed it a dark brown which I hated and which so wasn’t me. It’s been pink ever since. In person, I’m actually a lot more down to earth than people expect me to be.
I’ve always been surrounded by fashion and appreciated clothes from a very young age. My mother taught dressmaking at the Medway college of art in Kent so there were always wonderful couture magazines knocking around our house or bits of fabrics for dresses that were inspired by Balenciaga’s designs. I was seduced by all those wonderful clothes and would often model for the college dress shows for my mother when I was young.
Fashion has changed so much since I started designing on my own back in 1969. These days it’s much more commercial and you can’t just go with the flow the way you used to. Now everyone is so concerned with deadlines and manufacturing that’s it’s less about having flair. Back then you didn’t need to be attached to a big business.
Our high street does look quite homogenised sometimes as all those companies dip into the same creative pot. I often see copies of my prints although at least people acknowledge me and my designs are recognised. The trick has been to learn to knock myself off before others do.
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Great style is being brave enough to put a look together in an original way. I like individualism. What I hate about today’s fashion is the constant change for the sake of it. When that happens, clothes or collections don’t evolve as naturally they should and there’s a bit of a stilted feel.
Everyone knows that the main difference between the Americans’ approach to fashion and the Brits is that the Americans are much more conformist. They adhere to those funny, antiquated mottos like, “Don’t wear white after Labor day,” and there are so many do’s and don’ts that in many ways they are quite repressed. When it comes to Oscar night all those actresses turn out such cookie cutter fashion. The Oscars used to be fun to watch but now everyone has such manufactured “good taste”. On the plus point, I do admire the way they really build up occasions to produce a star image with proper dressed-up dresses. Society here isn’t as dressy and that is sometimes a shame.
During the late eighties and early nineties I had my own clientele but no one in the fashion world was really taking notice of what I was doing. I didn’t want to just leave my collections to the V&A, where they might fester in a box. Then Bill Gibb and Ossie Clark died and I thought it would be a good idea to pull those talents and start a museum, a sort of tribute to British fashion, which is what I did in Bermondsey. After many years of not being in the limelight, that opened up lots of doors.
Looking back one of the best things that happened was getting burgled. I used to have this beautiful shop in Mayfair that was closed down in the Eighties. Christian Lacroix sent me a note saying that he used to come and peer into the window when he was starting out. Anyway, we were robbed and they took everything out of the window display. While it was heartbreaking, I don’t think I’ve ever received more publicity than when that happened. There were newspaper cartoons for days after and I received publicity all around the globe.
Zandra Rhodes was talking to Carolyn Asome