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Zandra Rhodes
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Zandra (Lindsey) Rhodes, CBE, RDI, (born 19 September 1940, Chatham, Kent) is a British fashion designer.
Zandra Rhodes was introduced to the world of fashion by her mother, who was a fitter in a Paris fashion house and a teacher at Medway College of Art. Zandra studied first at Medway and then at the Royal College of Art in London. Her major area of study was printed textile design.
Her early textile fashion designs were considered too outrageous by the traditional British manufacturers.
Between 1966 and 1969, Zandra Rhodes and a fellow student, Sylvia Ayton, opened a boutique together called the Fulham Road Clothes Shop.
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Encyclopedia
Zandra (Lindsey) Rhodes, CBE, RDI, (born 19 September 1940, Chatham, Kent) is a British fashion designer.
Zandra Rhodes was introduced to the world of fashion by her mother, who was a fitter in a Paris fashion house and a teacher at Medway College of Art. Zandra studied first at Medway and then at the Royal College of Art in London. Her major area of study was printed textile design.
Her early textile fashion designs were considered too outrageous by the traditional British manufacturers.
Between 1966 and 1969, Zandra Rhodes and a fellow student, Sylvia Ayton, opened a boutique together called the Fulham Road Clothes Shop. Sylvia Ayton designed the clothing and Zandra supplied the textile designs out of which they were made. In 1969, Rhodes and Ayton went their separate ways, with Zandra establishing her own retail outlet in the fashionable Fulham Road in West London. Zandra's own lifestyle has proved to be as dramatic, glamorous and extrovert as her designs. With her bright green hair (later changed to a pink and sometimes red or other colours), theatrical makeup and art jewelry, she has stamped her identity on the international world of fashion.
She was one of the new wave of British designers who put London at the forefront of the international fashion scene in the 1970s. Her designs have always been clear, creative statements, dramatic but graceful, bold but feminine. Zandra's inspiration has always been from organic material and nature. Her innovative approach to the construction of garments can be seen in her use of reversed exposed seams and in her use of jeweled safety pins and tears during the punk era.
Zandra designed for Diana, Princess of Wales, and continues to design for royalty and celebrities. She notably designed a lot of famous costumes for Freddie Mercury of Queen. She has a strong following in the USA, UK, and Australia. Over the years, she has had many academic and professional honours bestowed upon her and was made a Commander of the British Empire by the Queen in 1997.
She has made San Diego her second home and it was the San Diego Opera that commissioned her to design the costumes for her first opera, The Magic Flute in 2001. Zandra is the founder of the Fashion and Textile Museum in London which was opened in May 2003 by Princess Michael of Kent.
On 22 September 2006, she appeared as herself on the long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers.
Rhodes also appeared, as herself, in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous (Ab Fab) during the BBC show's second season.
Zandra was a Guest Judge for the first episode of the third season of Project Catwalk (Season 3).
In December 2007, Zandra Rhodes hosted a dinner party at her penthouse, along with guests such as Andrew Logan and Marios Schwab. The dinner party was filmed by a London-based photographer Ben Charles Edwards, entitled Eat Your Chiffon.
Zandra continued her association with the San Diego Opera in 2008 when she designed the set and costumes for Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) and Verdi's AIDA for Houston Grand Opera and English National Opera.
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