Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects by Zandra Rhodes: A Review of Wigs, Turbans, and Fly Spray | Autobiography and Memoir

ESince arriving in 1960s London with a bag full of brightly coloured geometric prints and a signature style of zigzagged eyebrows and pink hair, Zandra Rhodes has prided herself on taking the road less travelled. It is ironic, then, that she has chosen to tell her life story in 50 objects, a narrative approach that has become standard operating procedure over the past 15 years. Yet such a contradiction is unlikely to give Rhodes much food for thought. Instead, at least on the evidence of this breathless, unthinking stroll through a life that can apparently be best told through Andy Warhol’s wig and Diana Ross’s turban, Rhodes carries on regardless.

At its weakest, this uneven approach creates disconcerting gaps. How, for example, did this self-described conscientious, academically-minded girl fail at primary and secondary school? Was she not disappointed? Such failures are brushed aside in the forward, lofty narrative of this Chatham, Kent, woman who repeatedly tells us that she refuses to care about the expectations of others.

Every now and then, Iconic’s episodic structure, with illustrations drawn from Rhodes’s sketchbook, slows down to make way for memorable portraits. Her mother, Beatrice, seems extraordinary. In the 1930s, the working-class Londoner travelled to Paris and got a job at House of Worth despite speaking no French. After the war, Beatrice went into teaching, becoming head of fashion at Medway College of Art while running a lucrative tailoring business on the side. All this is grouped together in a section called Fly Spray, a reference to Mrs Rhodes once spraying her hair with a stinging pesticide after mistaking it for the usual silver paint with which she finished off her exotic coiffure. The connection seems, to say the least, contrived.

“I was in awe of my mother: we weren’t friends. I was an extension of her ambition,” Rhodes writes in a rare moment of introspection. Usually, though, she prefers to emphasize her utter self-control. When a former classmate writes out of the blue to apologize for the way she and her friends used to make fun of Zandra on the school bus because of her odd clothes, Rhodes replies emphatically: “Well, that’s sweet, but I never noticed anyone laughing.”

The years of mockery did not last. In the early 1960s, Rhodes found her home at the Royal College of Art, though she was by then more of a textile artist than a fashion designer. Among her early triumphs, Heals bought part of her final show for upholstery fabrics. It was only after a few false starts and the encouragement of Diana Vreeland of American Vogue that Rhodes launched a career in fashion. Even then, the emphasis remained on fabric rather than line. Mind-blowing colour contrasts and sharp acids were what zandrified (her word) a garment rather than its clever cut or intricate construction.

By the 1970s, Rhodes’s reputation had grown sufficiently that Princess Anne posed in one of her dresses for her engagement portrait. It was a delicate gown of gauzy off-white fabric, covered in embroidered lace shells and with a flattering cinched waist (Prince Philip insisted that his daughter wear a substantial undergarment to avoid unsightly see-through). It was the first in a series of royal commissions, including dresses for Princess Margaret and Diana, Princess of Wales. Rhodes declares herself delighted, happy to admit that beneath her relentlessly zany self-presentation beats a monarchist heart that loves The Archers, in bed by 10 p.m. In 2014, she was made a dame.

The flashiest rumors are unfortunately limited. We learn that Francis Bacon was rather mean and that Vivienne Westwood took offense when Rhodes was called the High Priestess of Punk. But overall, everyone is absolutely fabulous, including, naturally, Joanna Lumley, with whom Rhodes appeared in the '90s sitcom.

Iconic isn't particularly enlightening or enchanting. At best, it gives us a glimpse into the struggles faced by professional women creatives in the decades before and after second-wave feminism: risky, lonely, and actually quite dark.