British fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes dressed Princess Diana five times, and said of the late Princess of Wales, per The Daily Mail, that Diana—who died at just 36 years old in a Paris car accident—got a “raw deal” and was “not happy” because of the absence of romantic love in her life.
It was Diana’s support, The Daily Mail reports, that raised Rhodes’ profile; the designer “is famous for her bold designs and equally daring electric pink hair,” the outlet writes, adding that Rhodes’ “designs are often sported by the rich and famous.” Diana’s seal of approval cemented Rhodes’ status “as one of Britain’s greatest designers,” the outlet continues, and in an interview with The Times, Rhodes gave keen insight on the late royal, describing her as “warm” but adding “You can have all the riches in the world, but if you don’t have love, or don’t feel loved, you have very little,” Rhodes said of Diana.
Rhodes first met Diana in 1981—the same year Diana married Prince Charles—when she came into her London boutique with her friend (and, later, Prince Andrew’s wife) Sarah Ferguson. The two browsed the shop like any other customers, even though Diana’s profile was on the rise after her recent engagement to Charles. After the visit to the boutique, Rhodes got an unexpected call from British Vogue, asking her to submit a design for Diana’s royal wedding dress. “While Zandra’s black corset sketch never became the royal wedding dress, it did end up in the possession of perhaps the next most famous Diana—Diana Ross,” The Daily Mail writes.
Though Elizabeth and David Emanuel ended up winning the competitive bid to design Diana’s wedding dress, Rhodes and the Princess of Wales would work together five times in total, including in 1986, when Diana returned to Rhodes’ shop and picked out a black dress to be remade in pink. “The garment became one of the statement pieces worn by Diana during an official visit to Japan that same year,” The Daily Mail reports.
Of working with Diana, Rhodes said “You get let into the palace with this dress over your arm and you do a curtsy, and you bump into the children’s toys,” she said, adding of Diana that “Happy wasn’t a word I would have associated with her, but she was very warm.”
Diana may have been Princess of Wales, but Tatler calls Rhodes the Princess of Punk. In an interview with The Guardian, Rhodes recalled another piece she made for Diana, telling the outlet that “I made her [a] white wrap dress, and she said she needed to know that it wouldn’t fall open and show her legs if she got out of a car, ‘Because you can be sure that when I get out of thar car, there’ll be people waiting at just the wrong angle to get me,’” she said, quoting Diana.
In 2017, Rhodes told Hello how brave it was at the time for Diana to work with her in the first place: “I was considered cutting edge with my green, then pink, hair,” she said. “Princess Diana had her own little ways of not conforming.”
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