British fashion and textile designer Zandra Rhodes, who is well known for her zany clothes and off-beat prints, is equally avant-garde in the design of her London flat. The blossoms that decorate the large, one-room studio are plastic plants bought in New York as souvenirs. A column festooned with more phony garlands separates the bed area, top, from the living area, bottom. In both spaces, slabs of foam in free-form, curving shapes stand in for furniture. The bed is recessed in a platform of foam- it is the large gray pillow in the background under the collage of a forest scene, top. The sofa in the living room is in two parts, a blue-plush-covered platform, surrounded by the wavy outer section in a small-scale print of Rhodes design. Zandra also designed the yellow plastic lamp in the shape of a column, and the glowing red table. Vignettes of her 'collections,' second and third images, include the plastic parrot astride a TV set upholstered in blur vinyl that appears to be a take-off of an Oldenburg soft sculpture. Table surfaces are strewn with oddities including the portrait of Beatle John Lennon.
Zandra Rhodes' flat. Text by Norma Skurka with photographs by Oberto Gil for Underground Interiors
, 1972.