Zandra Rhodes – 50 Years Of Fabulous - At The Fashion And Textile Museum
Image Courtesy of The fashion and Textile Museum
The Fashion and Textile Museum invite you to experience the creative spirit of this unique designer
To survive for fifty years in the give and take of the fashion world is no mean feat. To remain an independent spirit, plowing your distinctive furrow while the winds of change swirl about you is an extraordinary one.
Dame Zandra Rhodes is one such designer.This exhibition celebrates the founding of Rhodes’s fashion house.
Since 1969, the British textile and fashion designer has brought her distinctive vision to the collections she produces twice a year.
Designs from every year are featured, alongside the unique printed textiles that are the hallmark of Rhodes’s work. Zandra Rhodes – 50 Years of Fabulous looks at the sketchbooks that are the starting point for everything that Rhodes designs; the process that takes a sketch and transforms into a textile and then a garment is illuminated.
The catwalks that Rhodes so famously filled with spectacle after spectacle will be seen in rare archival footage.
Recent work also includes costumes designed by Rhodes for the opera, also highlighted here.
Zandra Lindsay Rhodes was born in Chatham, Kent, in the southeast of England.
Her prodigious talent for art was evident early on.
Surviving sketchbooks of her school art projects show a keen eye for observation, a skill that will inform her work as a professional designer.Rhodes’s initial thought was to be an illustrator; this only changed after studying with the influential textile designer Barbara Brown, whose work for Heal’s was some of the most well known of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
This experience changed the course of Rhodes’s future career plans; it was then that she decided to study textile design.
With Brown’s prompting, Rhodes applied to the Royal College of Art, at that time the most important art school in the country.
This masters-only programme took the best and the brightest of the country’s young talent; what made it special was the mix, students from across disciplines would interact and exchange ideas.
During the years when Rhodes attended, the Royal College was the fulcrum of Pop Art, and the presence of students like David Hockney (who was already gaining a following) and Derek Boshier would in turn influence the work of Zandra Rhodes.
Rhodes attended the Royal College of Art from 1962 to 1965, the three year course providing the designer with numerous opportunities to explore her chosen medium of printed textiles.
It was her time at the Royal College that continues to define Rhodes as a designer, and artist.
The interaction with other artists and designers at the RCA would provide her with an interdisciplinary approach that has allowed her to blur the boundaries of textile design, painting, performance and fashion throughout her working life.
