Wolfgang, Meet Zandra
In a few days, Zandra Rhodes, a perpetually pink-haired fashion designer once known as Britain’s arty purveyor of punk, will lift the curtain on a project that promises to make her own history, and that of the San Diego Opera, a lot more colorful.
Rhodes has created 127 costumes for the opera’s production of “The Magic Flute,” a Mozart fantasy that opens Jan. 20. From a rhinoceros with mirrored mosaic paws to a Queen of the Night cloak that literally sweeps the entire backdrop, Rhodes’ designs are likely to engage even non-opera fans. Word of the fanciful costumes has already boosted ticket sales and earned the production international media exposure.
The 60-year-old Rhodes, who in recent years has withdrawn from the fashion spotlight, stumbled upon her new costume career 3 1/2 years ago when Ian Campbell, the longtime general director of the San Diego Opera, dined at her oceanfront home in Del Mar. As Campbell sat surrounded by the multicolor essence of the Zandra Rhodes world, he began to imagine her in the role of opera costume designer.
“There’s with Zandra a craziness, an enthusiasm, a creativity that you don’t get as frequently from other opera designers,” said Campbell. “Many designers would lend their name, but she works. She’s like an employee here.”
Most fashion designers don’t find second careers designing for the stage, especially in seaside communities outside of the top fashion cities. Even though she’s a 12-hour flight from her London workshop, her schedule is as patchwork as the velvet dresses she often wears. She’s a designer of intricate clothing, colorful housewares and elaborate terrazzo floors, as well as a fashion museum founder and part-time San Diego society lady who is happily paired with her boyfriend, Salah Hassanein. He’s a theater and film company executive who has at times helped navigate her dream project, the Fashion and Textile Museum, a private venture set to open in 2002 in London’s revitalized South Bank.
Rhodes’ career path is about as straight as her famous “wiggles,” the jigsaw-shaped wavy lines that she has made a signature in her textile prints. After all, she’s dressed both kinds of British royalty: Queen, the rock group, and Princess Diana. For those contributions and others, the Queen of England designated her a Commander of the British Empire in 1997.
Though her college training prepared her for the life of a textile designer, she took to designing clothing out of necessity. “I started as a textile designer who couldn’t get a job,” she joked. Her avant-garde textile designs were often rejected or misused by clothing designers. As a result, she began to make garments that emphasized the cloth, which she often manipulated wildly. Her fame peaked in the late 1970s and early ‘80s as she and other British designers such as Vivienne Westwood ushered in the slashed, safety-pinned and outrageous look of punk, a style Rhodes called “conceptual chic.” Though fashion connoisseurs adore her intricate designs, Rhodes isn’t a commercial powerhouse.
“Marketing has never been her middle name,” said Sandy Schreier, an author and vintage couture collector. “I don’t think she thinks in terms of, ‘I am going to be more well-known and make more money.’ I don’t think that’s Zandra,” said Schreier. “She’s an artist. She does what makes her happy.”
Schreier compared Rhodes to Mariano Fortuny and Mary McFadden, who also have worked with textiles that incorporate historic patterns and features. “These people really don’t care about the fashion of the year and being au courant,” Schreier said. “They care about art, beauty and making women look beautiful.”
Though she still has a loyal following, Rhodes hasn’t staged a major runway show in five years and only occasionally presents trunk shows. Yet her influence, which was evident on many runways recently, stands to be better understood when the opera and the museum are unveiled.
Though she’s joined the ranks of artists David Hockney and Maurice Sendak, who also have designed “Magic Flute” productions, Rhodes is grounded in the task at hand. “It’s very nice, isn’t it?” is all she says of her newly elevated status, then promptly returned to showing sketches that chart the genesis of the costumes, which cost nearly $200,800.
“So this is my dragon,” she said, referring to one of the more elaborate puppet costumes while flipping through a rice paper sketchbook of her final designs. “This one is my masterpiece, I think,” she said of the lion costumes. “These are two-dimensional lions. You wear elegant feet and a tail, and hold this wonderful, big shield that’s the lion’s face, and you can make him roar--you move his mouth,” she said, rising slowly and painfully from a low couch to demonstrate.
“Excuse me, I need a hip replacement. It isn’t the shoes,” she says, indicating the hard-to-miss 4-inch red patent leather platform sandals with 8-inch heels.
Her expressive wardrobe has caused Missy West, the opera’s costume supervisor, to photograph what the petite designer wears to each of her sessions in the costume shop. West is also documenting the costume building process. “For us, this is probably the most pleasant experience that we have had with a designer, bar none,” said West. “She loves to learn something. That is her way of being open to the world. She has no ego problem with someone having another idea.”
Rhodes proved to be an adept and thrifty costume designer. Though she insisted on pink and blue Lurex monkey fur that cost $380 a yard, she also crafted headdresses out of pillowcases plucked from the bargain bin--and came in under budget.
“Because she has designed fashion for so long, she knows how to design things that look good at all angles,” Campbell said. “She had to learn from us a little on how you design for the stage and not for Lady Diana.” For example, Rhodes skipped using real feathers for the bird-man Papageno, because, said West, feathers can break and “pick up enormous amounts of dust and don’t let it go until the singers open their mouths to sing.” Instead, Rhodes and the costume craftsmen devised “feathers” from shredded silk zig-zag stitched onto lengths of weed wacker line.
It is only at the dress rehearsal, just days from opening night, that Rhodes and her staff will see the final product with all elements, from lights to actors. “The challenge really occurs in the fact that when you are trying something new, you are not quite sure that it will work,” Rhodes said. “It’s all, really, high-class experiment.”
Rhodes has frequently embraced local projects in her part-time home, whether she’s lecturing about fashion, giving tours of her colorful house or designing a children’s museum exhibit. “She’s really integrated herself into the community,” said her longtime friend, Beverly Hills art collector and writer Joan Agajanian Quinn. They met in the ‘70s in London, and Quinn was so taken with Rhodes’ hair and clothes, that ever since, she has dyed red or green streaks into her hair and worn Rhodes’ designs. Her friendship with Quinn and subsequent visits to Los Angeles have introduced Rhodes to the colors, landscape and ethnic influences of California. And now they will influence the look of the new museum.
The 10,255-square-foot building will be dedicated to all British textile and clothing designers who helped revolutionize modern fashion, including Mary Quant, Ossie Clark, John Galliano and, of course, Rhodes. “I saved over 2,000 of my original [textile and clothing designs] and felt they should be housed with a permanent home,” she explained.
Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta designed the bright orange and pink building to be as striking as Rhodes’ designs. “I made sure that I have the floors covered in my wiggles,” she said. She financed the first phase of the museum by selling her London home and creating eight penthouse apartments atop the museum, where she also will live in one of them.
After the five San Diego performances, the “Magic Flute” costumes could one day be displayed in the museum. Rhodes counts herself lucky to have done an opera, “so you don’t get in the same old mold.” She even launched a “Magic Flute”-themed evening wear collection recently as a result of the project. “And I’d love if they asked me to do the sets another time,” she said, though no plans have been finalized. “Before all this,” she said. “I wasn’t an opera buff.” She is now.
