Colouring her world

One of Britain's most significant fashion designers, Zandra Rhodes, arrives on Monday in Dunedin where she is a guest of iD Dunedin Fashion Week. Jude Hathaway caught up with her last week.

All the colour of Zandra Rhodes (CBE) comes down the phoneline from London, where the celebrated British fashion designer is attending London Fashion Week.

There is a genuine enthusiasm also, making it even harder to believe that this unconventional lady with the pink coiffure - who helped put London at the forefront of international fashion in the 1970s - is in her 70th year and has been an unmistakable fixture of the fashion industry for more than half a century.

This week, she brings her remarkable knowledge of textile and fashion design to the judging panel of the iD Dunedin International Emerging Designer Awards.

She is also bringing gorgeous garments from her collections to show the crowds at the Dunedin Railway Station platform at the 11th iD fashion shows on Friday and Saturday nights.

"I'm really looking forward to it, it's going to be something else," she says.

"I've never shown on a railway station platform before."

Patrons are in for a treat.

"I'll open with a couple of my historical designs.

"There will be the one-sided dress, like the one I designed for Jackie Kennedy.

"I'm also going to show some of my ultimate favourites such as the multi-chiffon kaftans.

"I hope that, all up, the collection will be a real Zandra Rhodes taster."

The collection will also be a reflection of the woman who has from early in her career designed for royalty, rock stars and the rich and famous.

As well as the late Diana, Princess of Wales and Jackie Onassis, her clientele has included Elizabeth Taylor and the late Freddie Mercury.

Princess Michael of Kent, Debbie Harry, Bianca Jagger, Kylie Minogue, Anastasia, Paris Hilton and Joan Rivers are others who have favoured the Zandra Rhodes style.

A Zandra Rhodes garment has been described as "the ultimate dress-up dress".

Helen Mirren, star of Calendar Girls, The Madness of King George, and The Queen wore a Zandra Rhodes when she received her Bafta award.

Jessica Parker has been adorned in Zandra Rhodes in Sex In The City.

Rhodes' vintage garments are also worn regularly on red carpets and at celebrity functions.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell is among those who collect her clothes and last month young actress Nicole Richie was photographed for Hello magazine looking glam in a chiffon vintage Zandra Rhodes dress with handkerchief hemline.

These days Rhodes divides her time between her homes in London and San Diego, working with a clientele as diverse as ever.

"In the United States I go to Palm Beach for my work.

"I also have clients in San Diego and many in the UK," she says.

The garments they buy have been described as "clear, creative statements, dramatic but graceful, bold but feminine that have a timeless quality that make them, unmistakably, a Rhodes creation".

Among them there have been the extroverted standouts.

Her "Conceptual Chic" collection of 1977 brought street style to couture, using embroidered rips and safety pins as jewellery.

The collection earned her, at the time, the title "The Princess of Punk".

Shortly after came the beautiful painted chiffon dresses of 1979, which feature in the London Design Museum's book Fifty Dresses That Changed the World, published last year.

It says: "She and her clothes brought a flamboyant, painterly energy to London's fashion scene".

She is in good company.

Yves Saint Laurent, Andre Courreges, Mary Quant, Issey Miyake, Hubert de Givenchy, Missoni and Coco Chanel are among the other revolutionaries listed.

However, the two designers she most admires are not in the line-up.

"I love the drapes of Lanvin's Alber Elbaz and he's so open and fab.

"And I like Jean Paul Gautier because he is continuously innovative."

In Dunedin she will use the bold and beautiful jewellery of notable English sculptor Andrew Logan to complement a number of her designs.

He is accompanying her to Dunedin.

Logan's sculpture of Zandra Rhodes was unveiled in the National Portrait Gallery by the Queen in 1994.

Born in Kent in 1940, Rhodes' introduction to the world of fashion was through her mother, who was a fitter in a Paris fashion house and a teacher at Medway College of Art.