ZANDRA RHODES and the late Princess of Wales concocted a plan to unleash Diana's hidden sexiness.
"I loved dressing Lady Di," Rhodes said. "We both really wanted to have a huge slit up her dress but in the end she said she couldn't possibly because the paparazzi would just try and take pictures of her knickers as soon as got out of the car. Meeting Lauren Bacall was great too. At the time I was working in this grotty studio in Bayswater and she came in and trod on a dress pin. She was howling away and I just thought 'isn't this strange?'"
Today, however, it's the promise of a new store that Zandra's getting excited about. Rhodes is keen to give her iconic British label a visual presence.
"It's something I'd absolutely love to do," she said at a talk held at Pure London yesterday. "It's my next big plan - I just want to be able to see everything and to go in there and meet my customers and see what they want. Did you ever hear Christian Lacroix talking about my old shop? He said he used to press his face up against the shop windows just to have a look - isn't that just lovely? Maybe he'd come back again."
Rhodes, who was recently named the Chancellor of the University of Creative Arts (READ THE STORY HERE), now divides her time between America and the UK. She has just returned from San Francisco where she has been designing the costumes for Aida at the Houston Grand Opera.
"I love trying to make all these big women look skinny - it's not easy," she said, "It's actually really nice designing clothes that aren't for tiny models. I can be much more theatrical about it too."
What doe she miss about living in the UK fulltime?
"Well I was at customs in the US the other day and the man checking my passport said to me 'Sorry Madam but you look like a clown, why have you got all that stuff on your face?' and I just replied 'I am not a clown actually - I'm just English.' You wouldn't get that sort of comment over here," she said
Can she ever imagine retiring?
"I don't think so - I mean what on Earth would I do?" she told us.
Zandra Rhodes' new collection of handbags is out now.
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YOU SHOULD SEE: What Zandra wore whe she met the Queen...
