Why everyone should have a friend who is in their 80s
When I was 22 and in my first journalism job, I made some lifelong friends – as twenty-somethings often do. Long hours, challenging bosses, common interests and enthusiasm tend to be fertile ground when it comes to friendships. The only difference was that one of these friends was more than double my age. When I first met the iconoclastic designer Zandra Rhodes, there was nearly a five-decade age gap between us. It has never mattered; if anything, it’s been a very important piece of glue.
My initial encounter with Zandra was in a professional capacity. My then-editor sent me to interview her at a fashion trade event in West London in the very early days of my writing career. What my boss hadn’t realised was that the interview was to be held on stage, in front of a pubic audience. It was a big job for a junior news reporter and I was terrified, expecting a formidable character who held no prisoners. I needn’t have worried. Zandra was a pink haired, petite dynamo, who wore her giant talent lightly. She was generous with her stories, relaying the time she accidentally caused the usually composed Lauren Bacall to squeal after she stood on a dress pin in her Bayswater studio. She recalled the mythical moment Freddie Mercury cemented one of her designs into rock-star history. She talked with humility and humour about how, really, she was simply a textile designer who couldn’t find a job. Everything that followed, she said, was nothing more than hard work and a refusal to give up. I liked her immediately. After the interview finished, she invited me for dinner at her rainbow-coloured London penthouse.
At the time, I was newly heartbroken and in that very intense first big break-up period where I felt nothing would ever be right again. My friendship group had become divided over it, and my world felt very insular. I left my flatmate’s birthday party that night to go to Zandra’s home feeling lonely and flat. What the dinner at Zandra’s did was shift my perspective and fill it with saturated colour. That is what my friendship with her has always done ever since.
I arrived to find seated at her round table the singer Lulu, the famed photographer Barry Lategan, and the sculptor Andrew Logan and his partner, the influential architect Michael Davis. Zandra herself was rushing around in the kitchen making dinner with one of her team. We ate her famed watermelon soup, followed by salmon. She has since told me that at one of her dinner parties, she dropped the salmon on the floor before serving it on the table, hoping that the three-second rule would be enough to prevent any issues.
Zandra has dinner parties weekly, she’s a pro at hosting, but really the guests come not for the food (although her bread and butter pudding is to die for), but for the conversation. She has a great ability to bring together likeminded, creative people – usually from different generations – to create lively, unforgettable evenings. We talk a good game about inclusivity in fashion, but for Z, it’s the foundation of everything; everyone is welcome under her roof so long as they are polite and interesting. At so many of her dinner parties, guests come away feeling as if their views have been challenged, whether related to trans rights or Brexit, which is often what happens when you mix with different generations: it shifts our understanding of the world. Quite simply, interesting conversations happen with people that aren’t the same age. Over the course of the 15 years we have known each other, Zandra and I have had many more dinners, attended parties and operas, shared ideas and stories, and drank more milky cups of teas than most people do in a lifetime.
Zandra and I grew up in very different times: she in post-war Britain and me in the late '80s and '90s. We have had very different life experiences and sometimes operate in different ways. When it came to writing her memoir, Iconic, which we worked on together, she would often send me handwritten notes, which she then photographed and sent to me via WhatsApp. She has absolutely no interest in Instagram, although is very grateful to her team for running her account on her behalf. We don’t always agree, but are comfortable having a debate, and have enabled one another to see life through a different lens. She comes from a time where grief, loss and heartbreak were glossed over – the bad times packed up in boxes, shoved to the back of the mind. During the course of writing Zandra’s memoir, I gently helped her unpack some of those boxes and to reflect on her tougher experiences. She reluctantly admits that exploring some of her more difficult past has changed the way she thinks about the people and events that shaped those periods – for example, her relationship with her father. We discovered that her grandmother on her father’s side was brutally murdered by an angry lover, with whom she was having an affair. Her grandfather moved away, leaving his son – Zandra’s father – in the care of an alcoholic aunt and uncle. He had a difficult upbringing to say the least. Zandra had always thought of him as a gruff, unambitious sort, but after learning about the dark realities of his childhood, now has greater understanding and empathy for him. He was, she says, a survivor.
She too has shifted my views on life. When I have talked to her about problems at work or in love, she has given me a different perspective than friends my own age. Both are important, but it is different talking to a peer about a break-up than it is an eighty-something whose beloved elderly partner is now bed-bound. When work problems seemed insurmountable, I have listened to Z when she has reassured me, because she is evidence that most professional storms will pass. She has also shown how important our friends are; I want my social circle to look as fun, accepting and supportive as hers when I’m in my 80s.
Despite the disparity in age, there are also commonalities: we both grew up in rural Kent and were desperate to get to London to fill our boots with creativity, fashion and interesting people. We both love learning new things and know our friends and family are the forces that carry us. We both love exploring; luxury travel is wonderful, but our favourite places are scruffy, diverse and soulful. We’re also both very enthusiastic people; there are so many places and people that Zandra has taught me about that have enriched my life. I am embarrassed to say that my 22-year-old self didn’t know who John Waters or Divine were before meeting Zandra. She is passionate about the things she loves, as am I, and I think that’s something that has bound us. Friendships with such a big age gap are uncommon, but I don’t understand why. We expect the same things from the people we love at every age: respect, care and an enjoyment of time spent together. The difference with friends of an older generation is that you’re given experience-informed insight as an added bonus.
Through age comes experience and, you hope, wisdom. There is a lot I have learnt from Z. The first is to always be yourself; life is so much sweeter if you embrace who you are, an understanding that I recognise in many of the older people I know. The second is to never sacrifice a part of yourself for love; relationships involve compromise, but you shouldn’t need to change who are you are. The right person will help you realise your dreams and to come up with new ones. The third is to nurture your friendships, because they sustain us. There is an irreverence to Zandra that I hope to absorb. She’s always understood who she is but now, aged 83, embraces it even more heartily. She can’t be bothered with botox because she thinks it would make her look “weird” and she refuses to diet because she likes bread and butter pudding too much. She’ll never leave London as it makes her feel alive and she won’t stop dying her hair pink because it makes her feel ready to take on the world. She is the ultimate anti-conformist. Perhaps that’s the greatest thing about having much older friends: they convince us to become our most authentic selves just by dint of being that themselves.
Iconic, My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects is available to order now.
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