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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Harriet Gibsone

Zandra Rhodes looks back: ‘Freddie Mercury was wonderful, but dressing Zsa Zsa Gabor was awful’

Born in Chatham, Kent in 1940, Zandra Rhodes is a fashion and textile designer and founder of the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. Known for her bold, outlandish use of colours and prints, she has dressed royalty and pop culture’s most famous, from Princess Diana to Debbie Harry. Rhodes has appeared in Absolutely Fabulous, and won a Daytime Emmy award for costume design in 1979. Her memoir, Iconic, has just been published.

Makeup artists are good at making you blossom, and my good friend Richard Sharah was wonderful at this. I am in a dress I designed after a trip I took across America in 1974 in a Volkswagen camper. It was gorgeous; and inspired my Cactus Cowboy collection. A wonderful period of my life.

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