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Paper dress by Sylvia Ayton and Zandra Rhodes (1966)

Zandra Lindsey Rhodes, CBE, RDI, (born 19 September 1940 in Chatham, Kent) is an English fashion designer, most prominent in the 1970s, known for her unusual clothes in loud colours.

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 textile design.

Her early textile fashion designs were considered too silly by the traditional British manufacturers, so in 1969, she established her own retail outlet in the fashionable Fulham Road in West London. Zandra's own lifestyle has proved to be as dramatic, glamorous and extroverted as her designs. With her bright green hair (later changed to a spectacular pink and sometimes a radiant red), theatrical makeup and art Jewellery, 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 and her garments have a timeless quality that makes them unmistakably a Rhodes creation. 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 the stylistic use of jewelled safety pins and tears during the punk era.

Zandra designed for the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and continues to design for the royal and the rich and famous around the world. She has a loyal, if small following in the USA. 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 other 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 opened in May 2003.

On 22 September 2006, she appeared as herself on the long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers.

• Morgan, Ann Lee (ed.) (1984) "Rhodes, Zandra (1940-)" Contemporary Designers First edition, Gale Research, Detroit;
• O'Hara, Georgina (1986) "Rhodes, Zandra (1940-)" The Encyclopaedia of Fashion Harry N. Abrams, New York;
• Parry, Melanie (ed.) (1997) "Rhodes, Zandra (1940-)" Chambers Biographical Dictionary Sixth edition, Larousse Kingfisher Chambers, New York;
• Crystal, David (ed.) (1998) "Rhodes, Zandra (1940-)" The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia Second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England;