Five Minutes With… Dame Zandra Rhodes

Resource type: Podcast

In this episode of Five Minutes With… we briefly catch up with iconic fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes, who has designed for countless household names including Freddie Mercury, Barbra Streisand, and Princess Diana. Dame Zandra explores the importance of personal connection in the digital age and how we can achieve it.

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Episode transcript

00:00:04

Chris Woods (CW)

What are the most important conversations we need to be having today and how can young people contribute to these conversations? These are the questions we ask our guests to answer in Five Minutes With…

00:00:13

CW

We briefly caught up with iconic fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes, ahead of her speaking in a Cumberland Conversation. Dame Zandra’s career spans over half a century, designing for household names including Freddie Mercury, Barbra Streisand, and Princess Diana.

00:00:28

CW

She now works to inspire future generations of fashion designers through the Zandra Rhodes Foundation. In this podcast, Dame Zandra explores the importance of connection in the digital age.

00:00:38

Dame Zandra Rhodes (ZR)

Hi, I’m Zandra Rhodes, fashion and textile designer and I’m thrilled to be here at Cumberland Lodge. I think the most important conversations we need to have with our youth of today is to bring back enthusiasm, a want for learning a want for, you know, so many people get led astray with all the problems there are.

00:01:00

ZR

That I think we need to get back that fabulous enthusiasm for things that will carry us forward and believe what a great nation we are. I think we get young people to contribute to those conversations by hoping that we could get them to communicate and not be communicating into a machine, but live and realise how much every one of us has got to give.

00:01:24

ZR

And realise that by talking to people and by getting to know people and not looking at our phones, I think we get a chance to really expand and become something. Connections are really, really important and the friendships you make and you manage to convey.

00:01:43

ZR

And well, I hope we get back into Europe again. I think it’s the saddest thing for our education system.

00:01:51

ZR

I think, it’s half the time, it’s when friends and contacts that carry you through and not being and by exchanging and meeting people and communicating, I think you get a chance to go forward and not into ourselves and lost.

00:02:11

CW

You can keep up to date with all the work of Cumberland Lodge on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook @CumberlandLodge or on our website, cumberlandlodge.ac.uk. Thank you again to Dame Zandra for joining us, and thanks for listening.