Zandra Rhodes on Private Passions with Michael Berkeley 25th May 2021

With her shocking pink hair and extravagantly colourful clothes, Dame Zandra Rhodes has been an instantly recognisable figure on the British fashion scene for more than fifty years. An artist as much as a clothes designer, she tells Michael Berkeley about her experiences dressing everyone from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana, to Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan.

As well as fashion, she has developed a passion for opera, designing productions for San Diego Opera and for Houston, in America, and for the English National Opera. She chooses music from operas by Bizet, Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and talks about her admiration for singers, and the particular challenges of designing costumes for the stage.

Zandra describes her evolution as a fashion designer, in particular how her screen-printed fabrics are at the heart of her designs. And how, at the age of 80, every morning she puts on brightly coloured clothes, jewellery and full make-up, and heads to her studio – with no intention of retiring.

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3