Dame Zandra Rhodes does not do self-pity. Or regrets. In the teeth of life events that would have floored lesser mortals — at the start of lockdown she was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live (this coming less than a year after the death of her long-term partner) — she remains practical, upbeat and resolutely forward-looking.
Thus she is not dwelling on her immunotherapy — “I go every three weeks, come out again and just get on with what I’m doing,” she says — but on her new boho retro fashion range, which she has recently launched in collaboration with Free People. The eight pieces are gorgeous, fresh and fun, her trademark prints a riot of colour.
“I’m thrilled with it,” says Rhodes, 80, bubbling with enthusiasm. She is talking on the phone from her rainbow-painted penthouse flat above the Fashion and Textile Museum, which she founded in 2003 in Bermondsey, southeast London. “A couple of the designs I did when I was at the Royal College 60 years ago and now reimagined. So exciting.”
Gloriously flamboyant, Rhodes — who has designed for royalty both real and Hollywood, not to mention rock’n’roll, from Princess Diana and Princess Anne to Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Freddie Mercury — is brimming with new projects. There’s a range for Ikea launching in September, a range of carpets to be sold China and she is knee-deep in cataloguing all the clothes she has saved during her career. “About 8,000 dresses; I didn’t know I was such a hoarder.”
The last was prompted by her cancer diagnosis in March 2020, which she revealed this year. She had been lying on the floor doing a deep breathing exercise. “I thought, ‘My stomach feels full and I haven’t had a meal all day.’ I went to the doctor and it was cancer of the bile duct. They said, ‘You’ve got six months.’ I thought, ‘My God, Ikea doesn’t come out for a year and a half, I’ve got to live longer!’ ”
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She is very matter-of-fact. “I formed my Zandra Rhodes Foundation, made sure I got a Do Not Resuscitate in place and thought I’d better get all my work sorted. That’s taken more than six months, so I’m glad they’d given me longer.” She laughs. “It didn’t worry me, and I don’t understand why. I was, like, ‘Got to pull myself together, get my house in order.’ ”
Her treatment coincided with lockdown. “It meant that nobody needed to know about it.” Her trademark pink hair (“a mix of Cyclamen and Pinkissimo Crazy Color”) got thinner but didn’t fall out. “I had pink and turquoise wigs if it had. And it’s thicker again now.”
Warm and chatty, Rhodes acquired new skills during lockdown. “I had to learn Zoom. I used to think that computers were a horrible interference and if you got an email from me it would all be in capitals because I found it tiring going up and down. But it’s been fantastic.”
She has a team of young staff who work with her and during lockdown she acquired Lottie, 25, who is helping with the cataloguing, as a housemate. “We cook together. I’m more traditional . . . but she’s been looking at that modern thing that kids look at.” TikTok? “That’s it. She’s come up with some good new recipes.” Rhodes also now owns a TV for the first time. “It doesn’t go on until nine and then my sister rings and tells me what she thinks is worth watching because she has the Radio Times. I end up watching old movies.
“Appearing on Celebrity MasterChef [in 2019] put me off watching cookery shows. Before I did it I thought I could cook.” She laughs, always up for a challenge. It was while she was in India filming The Real Marigold Hotel that she got news that the health of her partner of 25 years, businessman Salah Hassanein, was failing. She dropped out to fly to his bedside in San Diego, where they shared a beach house.
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Hassanein was 18 years older and had been president of Warner Bros International Theatres (“He built 500 multiplexes around the world”). They had met at a charity dinner party in New York. She says: “For me work would win over any relationship, but he was a workaholic and understood.” Rhodes divided her time between California and London.
“He died a month later,” she says. “He was the love of my life and it was a happy part of my life I was privileged to have had. So it was sad. But he had been bedridden for two years. He was an amazing self-made man and it wasn’t the best thing for him to endure.”
She is far too busy to think about the time she has left. “I live in the present.” But sorting out her legacy of fabulous frocks, which will be distributed to museums, brought memories of the stars she has dressed. Princess Diana was a fan (“A very, very nice girl”) and Rhodes, a royalist, was very respectful when she went to Kensington Palace to fit her. “Once she said, ‘Do you still go out on your bike?’ I was puzzled: how would she know I cycled? The week before I’d been cycling along the Bayswater Road in rain wearing a polyester knitted hat and a raincoat, looking dreadful. A car swept past carrying two girls who waved and called so I pretended not to see them. It must have been Diana and Sarah [Ferguson]. I was mortified.”
The least diva-ish of legends — she went home on the Tube after a Streisand concert in Hyde Park for which she designed the frock — she has had to deal with her share. Streisand was fine, but the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was a nightmare. “Like a kitten when there was a man in the room, but the minute they left it was, ‘I hate this dress!’ She reduced my assistant to tears.”
Diana Ross was another matter. “She was lovely when she came into my Bond Street shop and I was invited to her concert and the party. I was driving in LA a couple of months later and my friend said, ‘There’s Diana getting out of her car. Why don’t you say hello?’ I walked up the path and this cold, cold voice said, ‘If you come one step nearer I will shut this garage door down on you.’ I retreated!
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“The next day I came downstairs to find my friend looking bleary — Diana had phoned at 3am. She’d only seen me with a turban on in London, and there I was with green hair and feathers. She’d been ringing round town trying to find me [to apologise].” But 3am? “You wouldn’t think anything of it if you were a star.”
Rhodes is looking forward to putting her house in order. Not just the frocks but her stuff from the San Diego house, now sold. A large sculpture of Rhodes and Hassanein will be installed in the museum. “It wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for him,” she says. “I think the catalogue will take about six months. And then we’ll have to work out the conversion of my penthouse. When I eventually go, it will become a museum so people can see how I lived. That’s as far as I’ve got.” She laughs. “Other than I know I definitely want a cremation and my friends can scatter me where they like.”
Until then? Keep calm and carry on? “I don’t know about calm. Just carry on. Carry on working.”
Free People x Zandra Rhodes is available at freepeople.com/uk
Zandra Rhodes’s perfect weekend
Peloton or personal trainer?
Personal trainer twice a week on Zoom
Favourite nightcap: wine, whisky or water?
Plain old still water
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Bare-faced chic or full face of make-up?
I’m always made up. I sleep in make-up
Minimalist or maximalist?
I’m a complete hoarder. I just try to arrange the clutter so it looks pleasant
Staycation or Caribbean yacht?
My great friend Andrew Logan lives in Wales and I’m waiting to go down there. The yacht thing I’ve done in the past
Signature dish?
Summer pudding or rhubarb crumble with ice cream or double cream
I couldn’t get through the weekend without...
Checking the plants on the roof terrace of my penthouse flat: wonderful white hydrangeas one side, camellias the other
