‘I bought an ‘evil Rachman’ house for £24k – tenants included’

Designer Dame Zandra Rhodes, 85, graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1964.

Bursting on to the fashion scene in 1969 with her first solo fashion collection, she has dressed international stars in a career spanning five decades. In 2003, Dame Zandra founded the Fashion and Textile Museum, now located on the ground floor of a 1950s industrial building she bought in 1995 and converted. She lives in a penthouse at the top.

In 2020, she formed the Zandra Rhodes Foundation, a charity to enable future generations of designers, artists, researchers, students and educators to study her methods and techniques.

What attracted you to your home?

Some friends saw a cash-and-carry building in a run-down street in Bermondsey and said: “This’d be perfect for your museum.”

I said: “What do you think I am, made of money?”

That’s where it began and I persuaded the top architect of Mexico, Ricardo Legorreta, to design it for me: the interior and the exterior.

During the years of my work, I’d saved all my most important work and stored it. I always wanted to create a museum. This building seemed perfect with its very large wide wide-open space.

Then, by building flats on the top including my penthouse, we were able to fill the flats.

Do you have a favourite room?

I basically live by myself but have someone in one of the rooms in my flat. My favourite room is my big open penthouse, which is on two levels and goes across the whole front of the building with a walled balcony around three sides.

From there I can see Canary Wharf one way and Elephant and Castle another way.

The whole building is probably four floors because the museum is the equivalent height of two floors, where my workrooms are, like a mezzanine on the big area.

What was your childhood home like?

My childhood home was a three-bedroom terraced house with lovely parquet flooring and a lovely long garden on top of the North Downs in Chatham, Kent.

My father designed the garden into layers. We grew dahlias on one level and he had a little shed with chickens and rabbits. They were for eating which was normal during and after the war. Most people in the street grew vegetables or fruit. My sister and I would sometimes gather snails to stop them going into my father’s irises.

I’m a war baby, born in 1940. Bombs hit Chatham on the way to London so there were quite a few bomb sites. My grandmother had a newsagent shop, my mother drove an ambulance during the war.

How many properties have you lived in?

Five. I lived with my parents, then came to London at the age of 19 and had a bed-sitter in South Kensington.

After that a friend from the Royal College and I had a flat in Notting Hill.

In about 1972, I bought a Rachman house in Notting Hill for about £24,000. Rachman was a sort of evil landlord who rented out rooms, dividing them with curtains and made a lot of money from letting people live in semi-squalor. It was in a very bad condition with floating sewage at the bottom – but the house was beautiful. It had a basement and three floors.

The second and third floors had sitting tenants who’d been there since 1940. They were perfect. The old couple on the top floor got rehoused because they couldn’t manage the stairs but, when her husband died, the wife asked if she could come back because she was very happy in my house. And the other lady was amazing, she lived with me till she died.

It had a tiny back garden that taught me gardening with shade-loving plants like camellias and Hydrangea petiolaris to grow up the wall. I had a pet hedgehog but it escaped over the wall and didn’t come back – it would have gone up the creepers into someone else’s garden.

I sold the house for £900,000 in 1995 – the same sum I paid that year for this building which was a post-war warehouse with offices above.

Did you buy any of your properties as investments?

I didn’t anticipate ever selling the Rachman house. I lived in it and it was a well-loved house. It was only when my great friend Andrew Logan found this building and said “Zandra, you’ve always wanted to do a museum” that it even crossed my mind that this would happen.

So it was only by chance that Notting Hill came up in value and it worked out that it would pay for the museum. I didn’t buy either of them for their worth but I should think this one is worth quite a lot.

How did you go about your building alterations?

I lived in squalor for five years in the offices above while I raised the money and found the architect. I knew I had to get the building converted in order to turn it into a museum and home. The balcony was converted into my design studio and underneath is my print room. It’s a wonderful pink and orange landmark in Bermondsey.

This was a nondescript pre-Shard London street where no one went. At the time I moved in, people wondered if I was safe walking home – you should see it now.

We raised the money to do the rebuild but I was half living in it as well so it was not glamorous. I did it with my partner, Salah Hassanein, who sadly died in 2019 – but we finished the building.

With the alterations I was achieving my dream, so it was perfect, and I collect whatever I like.

Your biggest home improvement?

I designed the rainbow floor in my penthouse, which is done in Amtico tiles.

I’ve got carved screens from India from when I did a project there. I’ve got carpets that I designed, wallpapers I did. Everything in my home is decorated with my own work.

Do you garden?

I have a terrace on the penthouse floor: on the north side I have camellias and hydrangeas and water butts to collect water if it rains. Along the front I have a row of white hydrangeas in pots and on the sunny side I have climbing roses, an Australian bottlebrush with pink fluffy flowers, peonies and sun-loving flowers.

What collections do you have?

I recently spent £300 on an Adel Rootstein mannequin. She was one of my mentors. I’m collecting mannequins that she made because she died about 30 years ago.

The most I spent was £5,000 on an Andrew Stahl painting that sits in my penthouse.

I also collect modern pottery, usually by going to the Royal College of Art and discovering them. I’ve got sculpture and mirror art works by Andrew Logan and my 1979 Daytime Emmy Award for costume design for Romeo and Juliet on Ice also takes pride of place.

In the centre of my table I have a Dutch tulipiere with lots of wonderful tulips and around it are stones I’ve collected from all over the world: pieces of striped sandstone from Petra, a piece of agate I was given in Australia and geodes from Morocco. They are all pieces of my life.

How do you relax?

I relax by giving dinner parties to friends. I’ve got a big circular table that will seat 14 easily.

I built it myself – together with the person I lived with years ago – when I was a student and first moved into my place at Notting Hill Gate, when it was a case of having to make things.

Who are some of the most memorable people you’ve worked with?

I’ve made the Freddie Mercury pleated outfit that one always thinks of him in. I’ve made Barbra Streisand’s outfit when she last sang in Hyde Park. I made clothes for Diana Ross. I made Princess Anne’s engagement dress when she looked like a fairytale princess.

It was lovely dressing Princess Diana, going to the palace and making clothes for her. For Princess Diana, I made the pink off-shoulder dress that you always think of when she announced she was pregnant in Japan.

Where would you live if you had to move?

I’ve put so much into making a home here, it’s the last thing I would want to have to consider! I had to get a crane to bring my camellia pots up and I have now put in a Stannah stairlift that I use as I get older, when my legs get tired going up the stairs.

Do you have a pension?

Yes, I’ve been putting money into a pension but I don’t plan to retire. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself!

Dame Zandra Rhodes is the proud owner of the new Stannah 158 stairlift. Available to buy from January 2026 from stannah.com.

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