Ahead of the Release of Bohemian Rhapsody , Zandra Rhodes Models the Wedding Top Freddie Mercury Fell in Love With
In 1974, Zandra Rhodes hadn’t heard of the band Queen. When Brian May or Freddie Mercury (she can’t recall which) first phoned the designer’s small attic studio in London’s Paddington neighborhood, she had to ask her employees to play some of their songs for her. After a listen of their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, she told the band members to swing by after working hours, since she didn’t have fitting rooms. At the time, Rhodes had a small operation but was fast becoming one of the foremost designers of romantic, colorful frocks in the world. She’d already dressed the likes of Lauren Bacall and Liz Taylor.
“Queen came one early evening and I told them to just pick things off the rails,” Rhodes tells Vogue. “I told them to pick what they like and to try it on. I wanted them to run around the room and jump around and just see how it felt, how it would feel onstage.” Mercury went straight for a cape shirt in heavy ivory silk that had an embroidered bodice and giant pleated butterfly sleeves. “It was the top of a wedding dress idea I had,” Rhodes recalls. “It came with a matching skirt and I’d designed both pieces during what I like to call my ‘Field of Lilies’ period. The look was really inspired by my model at the time, Tina Chow, and drawings of lilies I’d done while visiting Japan.” She adds, “that was the original, then we made a special version of it for Freddie that was done in a heavy cream satin with quilting at the chest instead of the embroidery.”
Rhodes has held onto that wedding top ever since, and she recently unearthed it from her archives and tried it on for us, conjuring memories of that first fitting with Mercury and his mates. She’s received a lot of inquiries about it lately, all due to the fact that a biopic of the band and its iconic frontman, titled Bohemian Rhapsody, is out this Friday. While the film itself has gotten mixed reviews, Rami Malek has been praised for his portrayal of Mercury—ivory Zandra Rhodes stage costume and all. “We actually remade the white cape top for the film,” the designer says. “You get a very quick glimpse of it, but it happens to be one of the outfits that everyone seems to remember him in.”
It’s true, the dramatic monochrome ensemble has a special place in rock ’n’ roll history, especially considering the fact that Mercury’s style helped to emphasize his true genius on the stage. Alongside Bowie, and later Prince, he was the one paving the way for a guy with a voice and a guitar to wear androgynous, often shocking clothing. As Rhodes says, “He was one of the very early adopters of, I don’t want to say cross-dressing but, he saw the value of dress and makeup and did that very early on.” She adds, “the fact that he enjoyed doing that might have been something he didn’t want to emphasize, but now we’re living in a totally different period, people don’t have to deny things anymore. He definitely paved the way for this sort of style.” Mercury hid his homosexuality and battle with AIDS from the public, but he remained passionate about expressing himself through both song and theatrical modes of dress. As Rhodes puts it, “he was a god onstage.”
The designer only worked with Queen for a short time and made no more than a few costumes for Mercury and May. They were friendly and they ran in similar circles, but mostly they kept things professional. The biggest thing Rhodes and Mercury had in common was perhaps their flair, hers visible in her electric wigs and heavy makeup, his in his gender-fluid costumes. While Rhodes was dressing Princess Diana for her royal tours, Mercury was supposedly disguising Di in men’s clothing and sneaking her into a gay club. Rhodes and Mercury were kindred spirits in their pursuit of fantasy, you might say.
At age 78 and on the brink of a 50-year anniversary of her namesake business (she has a memoir coming out next year), Rhodes looks back on that fantastical, wild period fondly. “It was a very exotic time for me,” she says. “I remember Queen gave me tickets to their show in London shortly after I’d made the first pieces for them. You could imagine that white top onstage and it was just absolutely amazing. It’s always wonderful when someone puts on your clothes and just feels lovely.”
