International Women's Day with Dame Zandra Rhodes

[00:00:07] You're listening to Retail Disrupted, a podcast that explores the latest industry developments and the trends that will shape how we shop in the future. I'm your host, Natalie Berg This week we are celebrating International Women's Day. I have such a special and inspiring guest for you all.

[00:00:35] I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. I am going to be speaking to the iconic Dame Zandra Rhodes who is going to talk us through her illustrious career as a fashion designer. We're going to talk about what it was like to dress stars like Freddie Mercury.

[00:00:51] We're going to talk about the importance of defying the norm, and we're also going to hear about Dame Zandra's more recent collaborations with brands like IKEA and Happy Socks. First, let me say a few words about Dame Zandra.

[00:01:05] Known for her fabulously bold prints, she launched her upon a Miss Fashion brand 56 years ago. Knick named the Princess of Punk, Dame Zandra burst onto the fashion scene in the late 1960s and continues to work from her studio in London today.

[00:01:21] She began as a printed textile designer and is renowned for perfecting the art of print as an intrinsic influence on garment shape. With dramatic designs and her own distinctive look, Dame Zandra paved the way for fashion as theater and entertainment.

[00:01:38] She's dressed international stars like Diana Ross and Barbara Streisen, as well as British royalty, most notably Princess Diana and Princess Anne. This interview took place in front of a live audience at the Spring Fair event in Birmingham. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[00:02:02] The first thing I'd like to ask you is which era was your favorite? I suppose really I remember most with love my first collection collections in the 70s which are really all the flowing chiffons and all the dramatic because it was my really my adventure into fashion.

[00:02:22] I was printing them myself and cutting them out and doing all the finishing and so I was very much involved with the whole thing. I mean, I still am involved with anything that I do but I suppose it was really

[00:02:36] that it was the first of my adventures and so it was all totally new and it was really that I was fighting to make things work so you don't realise the size of the adventure. So I think that's really what it was.

[00:02:53] Yeah, and if we just go back to the beginning and you just show those gorgeous photos of Natalie Wood wearing your collection, I mean just how big of a moment was that for you? Were you surprised by how quickly things took off for you?

[00:03:06] It was just quite amazing that women's wear ran a whole article on me the same week that I was there and then I was introduced to the top interior decorator, Ancelo Dongyue that is the one

[00:03:20] that you heard about if you watched that wholesome thing and he said well if you look like that I want to see your designs so he took a whole range of furnishing fabrics and wallpaper

[00:03:32] so it was almost like I was walking on air you know it was a wonderful wonderful period of course I probably see it through a gorgeous cloud now but it still seems like a wonderful thing that sometimes I can't even think how did that happen to me.

[00:03:52] I don't think with all of us we just have to hope that we take advantage of the opportunities come along and run with it yeah absolutely your memoir is being really slater this year and what

[00:04:05] comes on to that a little bit later in the conversation but I thought it was interesting how you discuss how you spent your life rallying against what was expected of you both as a designer

[00:04:15] and as a female and you talk about the importance of defying the norm so I wonder if you can elaborate on this a little bit and how you went about challenging the status quo.

[00:04:25] I think with all of us if we're designers you have to try and find your own niche for wherever you're going to fit in and try and work out what I mean I just knew that I couldn't have been

[00:04:42] designing in textures I just felt that was the right thing to do I don't know why it happened inside me although I do feel that once you'd always surround oneself by encouraging friends

[00:04:54] not people that are going to put you down because you're always find someone who's going to say you shouldn't do it but then you might regret it for the rest of your life that you didn't you

[00:05:05] didn't go ahead and try something yeah surround yourself with those people that do believe in you and yeah I'm kind of and I've been very lucky in having wonderful friends that try things or

[00:05:16] experiment or think of using me for something you know and I think that's that's extremely important in life yeah let's talk about your personal image because you have a signature look

[00:05:28] to what extent has your personal image led to the success of your brand so I had a wonderful friendship with Leonard the hairdresser and it was very funny because Vidal's assumed brought out

[00:05:46] green weeks and I put a green wig on and it pinched my head and I thought hang on as a text our person I'm sure one can die hair as much as you can die stuff that grows on sheep so

[00:06:01] I went along first to Vidal's as soon and they wouldn't they said you've got black hair we're not going to touch it then I went to Leonard and they experimented with bleaching and I took my own

[00:06:11] dyes in and thought oh they can use those because they hadn't invented all this color dyes at the time so of course the green which I tried first used to end up like old dried grass but you know

[00:06:23] so I trialled and I worked very closely with fabulous makeup artists at that time I was still doing those all myself and it was before makeup so you'd have to go to warwars as see what you could find

[00:06:38] to try out different ideas and then I worked the wonderful makeup artist Richard Sharra who invented the three makeups and the square beauty spots for the punk look and I used to still teach one

[00:06:54] day a week later wonder why they were looking at the Victoria station and then India was always a big influence with all the blue shading around the you know like the blue gods and things like

[00:07:07] that so I had a wonderful time trying out all the different things and you've dressed every everyone from rock starstoreal tea touched on it in the intro you've dressed I in a ross Freddie Mercury

[00:07:20] Donna Summer Princess Diana the list goes on your vision span generations and genres but was there a particular moment from your career that stood out for you I really enjoyed dressing of Freddie Mercury

[00:07:34] you know here Brian phome up and I had a funny little studio in base water where you had to climb up all these flights of stairs to get to the attic nice said well you have to come in the

[00:07:46] evening because I don't have a this was in 19 what about 1974 75 before they were the size group they are now and so they came in the evening and then I picked off a wedding top which is

[00:08:02] a pleated one that you always see Freddie in and you know and I said move around the room and see how you feel in the outfit and that's the one they always remember them which is quite

[00:08:16] fantastic you know and is there anyone that you'd like to work with anyone out there today that I wouldn't say no to doing something for Beyonce or whatever you know it'd be great to do

[00:08:28] one for a star fantastic so if we shift gears a little bit and talk about your rainbow penthouse this is both your home and studio and it sits on top of the fashion and textile museum

[00:08:44] which you found it in 2003 it's a color loving maximalist dream I absolutely love it what's you most appreciate about your home and how has it evolved over the years well my great friend

[00:08:58] Andrew Logan saw was living in Burmese which was really they hadn't built the shards so it was a bit of the back of Beyonce it's not you've always wanted to do a museum this is warehouse going in

[00:09:12] in in Burmese why don't you get it so I realized I could sell my house in notting a gate and afford to buy this warehouse so I bought the warehouse and lived in quite

[00:09:25] squalid conditions for a couple of years while I was and ran my business from there as well moved everything I owned into the whole warehouse and then I thought the government would give me a

[00:09:40] grant but they didn't so my boyfriend was fabulous and he said well why don't you where get another well first of all I thought I have to choose a notable architect and I thought that the

[00:09:54] the Ricardo Legretta the Mexican architect will be not only wonderful PR but he did buildings in bright colors and so I'd managed to maneuver meeting him live and I flew him to London first class

[00:10:11] on my mileage tickets and convinced him that Burmese was an up and coming area and he agreed to design the building for me and then we got another architect Alan Camp to work with him

[00:10:27] to build flats on the top so we could sell the flats and that would pay for doing the whole building and so I have well my penthouse is on the top of the building and in in true style that

[00:10:42] fitted in with Legretta we decided it should be rainbow now twice a year you actually open the doors of the rainbow penthouse and host a sample sale and I imagine it's not a conventional retail

[00:10:54] experience so can you maybe talk us through what happens at the sale and what makes it so unique well I just have a group of fabulous other designers Andrew Logan who used to live around the corner

[00:11:07] in in his place he used to do the sales and then I took it over so we have a big table selling Andrew Logan jewelry of which I have someone which he does as a money maker to pay for doing his

[00:11:20] sculpture a lot of the time then I have peers at concern selling his hats sometimes I have cat McConey with her magical shoes and various other designers it's really quite a wonderful experience where

[00:11:36] everyone just comes around and has a social occasion and we sell various samples I might have so a maybe scarves whatever I have going at the time now if we go back a few years to those dark

[00:11:52] COVID times your business like so many had to adapt and I imagine do that pretty quickly as well so can you share with us how the structure of your business has evolved? Well it's been very

[00:12:03] interesting with COVID we were making dresses that we were selling to liberties at that time and suddenly everything got cancelled you'd find that there was always a clause where someone says

[00:12:17] we can send it back even two or three weeks beforehand you'd already made it so the whole of my business including printing the fabric making it would have been I think we were making trousers suits at that time

[00:12:30] that were going to liberties they got sent back and everything got completely shut down and I just kept two staff who worked with me remotely and for me it was a fantastic period because all through

[00:12:47] my career I always saved my favorite originals so I kept the first of the Freddie Mercury top I kept one of the princess Diana dresses that she dried on and so when we went through all these

[00:13:03] 87 chests I had I found that I got over 5,000 garments so once they slightly lifted the rules of COVID we were able to catalog so we've been cataloging all of the fabrics that I did during that time

[00:13:20] all of the garments and we're now working out which museums across the world are going to have some of the key pieces so it's been a very exciting period let's talk about some of your strategic

[00:13:34] collaborations over the past few years you've teamed up with the number of fashion and lifestyle brands such as IKEA happy socks and populist men so what could talk us through what the inspiration

[00:13:45] was behind these partnerships well I had that time my agent who I admit when we did an exhibition on Sweden and she proposed to be my agent and she first of all asked me if I would go on a trip

[00:14:01] to Sweden to their wonderful interior show and they chose to do a mock up of my rainbow penthouse as the entry to their big show which is like Earl's caught in Olympia you know all those wonderful

[00:14:18] so she said what would you really like to do and I said I'd love to do a collection for IKEA I mean IKEA is like one of the gods of the industry and so I was introduced to the head of IKEA

[00:14:34] and ended up going with my team to do a whole collection with rugs and vases, lampshades, carpets so that was my collection for IKEA that was launched once COVID slightly lifted

[00:14:50] because we did some of the stuff by zoom which has been an amazing way of communication ever since you don't have to go to meetings everywhere so when they'd get their samples so I get one rug

[00:15:03] to me one rug was sent to Sweden and we could talk over zoom and compare the things so it was fabulous like that. I know you're going to talk to happy socks and some of the other

[00:15:15] collaborations but what we did that can I just ask one more question about IKEA because it's clearly a very different market to what you were used to working with so how does working with a

[00:15:24] brand like IKEA help to democratize your designs with any kind of learning it's fantastic working with an organisation where it's a whole village that's been set up and the joy of the whole

[00:15:37] thing and the teams they put together on how they market the whole thing it was a wonderful experience going over to Sweden and being in their actual village and talking to their staff

[00:15:50] with my staff and everything so it was a great experience. I'd like to get your thoughts around the future of fashion, big topic and first I'd like to ask you about sustainability because

[00:16:04] I know that's a key theme of the show and you know it's no secret the fashion is a resource intensive industry there is a big push towards circularity and across the wider retail sector

[00:16:16] we are seeing real progress when it comes to things like resale and rental repair so it feels like you know moving in the right direction but what more do you think can be done do you think that

[00:16:28] the industry can ever truly be sustainable. I think the way the world's going we've got to think of everything being sustainable I think you know to find out to see how we can make things

[00:16:41] last or be used in different ways so that we're not always thinking we've got to have something new or we have one thing new that you then wear with other things so that I think we can't keep using

[00:16:55] the world's resources we've got to think more carefully which means the bigger companies have got to think can we size down very cleverly. Do you not a mean and work out what we can do about it

[00:17:08] and have things that we go on wearing and we can't just think of the fact that we've always got to be seen as something new, new, new but treasure what we have and work out how we can add to it

[00:17:22] and make different looks without it always being new. The durability being really important. That's a very important thing yes. Absolutely. What about digital transformation because we've seen a big shift where obviously a lot more of us are shopping online, we're all connected with our phones and

[00:17:40] our expectations around digital or now kind of through the roof but how do you think digital has impacted the fashion industry? In a way it's almost killed the shopping industry you know what

[00:17:54] I mean I think it's a very difficult situation. I walk down bond street and the whole street's empty it means everything really has turned digital and I don't really know what we're going to do about

[00:18:09] all of those wonderful front pieces are they just selling what's in the background. It's a very difficult situation I think. I guess within fashion though there's still that need to feel the

[00:18:22] fabric and try stuff on I mean sizing is a big challenge as well so I guess there'll always be an element of I think it has to be I can't I mean you can't try on through a screen I don't know what the final

[00:18:35] solution is going to be in that sense because also in a weird way our lives have got so busy that it's not always that you can just drift along and try things on but on the other hand sometimes

[00:18:51] it worries me on the wastefulness of things being sent out and people trying them on and then sending some back you know and the whole the whole thing like that is a whole by-the-try mentality for

[00:19:03] you order six things and it's a very difficult situation yeah I think it is difficult for for the retailers as well because they're kind of enabling that in three different groups of retail yeah

[00:19:16] so I want to move on to what comes next now you recently set up the Zander Road's foundation you're currently cataloging your archive of over six thousand garments can you tell us a little bit

[00:19:28] about the foundation and its aims well the Zander Road's foundation is the moment totally catalogging all the clothes I've done and trying to work out which museums and where things go to and then

[00:19:43] very excitedly is the red room in Blenempellis where at the very end of March we're doing a presentation of about 20 to 24 of my historical garments that we're going to show in this room the rest of the

[00:19:59] rooms you've got John Galliano and you've got Stephen Jones so there's a whole group of us designers each pick-to-room and we're going to be showing and we're showing my historical collection the 24 garments that are going into that are really part of what Carri Taylor is taking for

[00:20:22] raising a sale for the museums so they'll be able to see my historical garments there which is extremely exciting and that opens in March I think the openings Friday the 22nd I think it is and then

[00:20:36] it's open to the public after that until the end of June right and you have been busy because you've also been writing your memoir it's going to be published with Penguin in July it's called

[00:20:49] iconic my life in fashion in 50 objects it's the first time that you're telling your life story what was that experience like and is there anything that you can share with us let me off coming it was actually a terribly difficult experience because the person doing it with me

[00:21:09] L. Alexander who I first knew when she started on English folk and then she went to Harper's and then she came to me and said I'd really like to write a memoir and use Sandra also going to

[00:21:24] illustrate it so I've had to do all the illustrations by hand so it's a home memoir of bits of my life that I hope will be interesting and not too revealing but I'm not sure yet

[00:21:39] to wait to July to find out one final question for you what advice would you give to the next generation of designers and creatives in the room? Never give up. The world might be changing so you hope that

[00:21:54] you adapt to it and continue and don't let people put you off always surround yourself with people that are least encouraging you can always find someone that will say don't do it you can't do it

[00:22:09] but then what you do after that you'd always feel like a defeated person you're better to aim at something and know that you might reach the stars than to not do it at all and then regret it

[00:22:23] for the rest of your life. You'll always find someone that will put you down and always always surround yourself with people that encourage you if it's going to require a lot of work

[00:22:34] you don't want someone that's always going to make you go out to a nightclub I mean when I've talked to some students and it's a bit like Alice in Wonderland you've got that wonderful jar of

[00:22:45] cookies up there and you lift down the cookie and it says I want to be a famous designer. The only thing is once you swallow the pill you can't sit here up again and you've just got to go where

[00:22:58] it leads you and realize that there's always an up and a downside and make sure that you take advantage of the upside and ignore the horrible bits. Fantastic it's been an absolute honor

[00:23:12] having you here with us today thank you it's been lovely thank you. Thank you for listening to retail disrupted if you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast please leave a rating or review or share it with others it really makes a difference