From the Archives: All Rhodes Leads to Zandra

Editor's Note: This fourth installment of WWD's look through the Fairchild Fashion Archives reproduces a December 31, 1975 interview in London with the talented Zandra Rhodes, as well as an interview from February 15 1977 in Paris with the iconic Madame Grès.

LONDON — Behind the faded, anonymous blue door of Porchester Road (London's estate agents' district euphemistically described as "booming") lurks a hive of activity where Zandra Rhodes and her team of workers print, make up and hand-finish her romantic fantasy designs.

“When Bill Blass was around, I felt so uncomfortable showing him around,” Rhodes says in his Cockney shriek. "You know how big he is, but he wanted to see it all."

"She represents a fresh approach to clothing," says Blass, who met Rhodes a few years ago at a runway show in Palm Beach. "In London, she and Jean Muir are the ones making global contributions to fashion."

Evangeline Bruce, Marietta Tree, Britt Ekland, Pat Harmsworth, Lady Lichfield and Pauline de Rothschild, for whom Rhodes "is the most talented designer in the world".

“Tony Snowdon brought his kids for tea and said he wanted to make a movie here. kind of disconcerting to change in front of a dozen girls cutting and machining around you when you're used to a cushy dressing room. When Lauren Bacall first came here," Rhodes recounts, "she walked on a pin. I I didn't know what to say. But she's such a sensational woman. She says I'm the worst dresser she knows because she always catches me in jeans looking terrible."

Whether she's wearing jeans or her own designs, Zandra Rhodes looks eccentric, never scary. His hair changes color according to his moods: it is now blackish brown with a peacock blue plume. She circles her eyes in the same color and adds a blue mole or two. She is as small, sturdy and tough as a terrier, demanding high standards and conscientiousness from the people who work for her. She herself works a 14-hour day, starting at 7:30 a.m. “I am always at work, even on Sundays. I find that I can't separate work from pleasure."

The London boutique she opened in June took the pressure off a lot, she says. It's run by Anne Knight - "England's Gerry Stutz" - and means customers go straight to the store, not the studio. Yet Rhodes complains of a lack of space to design and work in, and is looking for bigger premises. She currently uses the main room of her colorful apartment nearby to house the cutters.

The cut fabric is transported to Porchester Road, put in plastic bags and given to one of the two dozen sardine girls in the room among boxes of feathers, frills, sequins and sewing machines. The only heating comes from paraffin fires. "People always tell me how fire risk this place is."

A finished chiffon dress is "a work of art", says Rhodes. In the London boutique, a dress sells for around $600 and the customer is presented with a printed silk certificate with Rhodes' assurance: "This is one of my special dresses, I consider it a work of art. 'art you will cherish forever', signed by her and numbered. "With my genre of priced clothing, I maintain that every dress should be exclusive."

Sixty-five percent of customers who walk into the store are Americans, says Rhodes. "When we opened I was like, 'I'm going to fall flat with this, but since then business has tripled. She plans to open a similar store in New York by fall.

Would she consider living in the United States? " I surely can. I love it there...