Sophia neophitou apostolou biography channel

In this week’s episode of Style DNA I chat with the original Princess of Punk, the truly extraordinary, iconic and zany, Dame Zandra Rhodes DBE.

Known for her fabulously bold prints, she launched her eponymous fashion brand 56 years ago. Rhodes is renowned for perfecting the art-of-print as an intrinsic influence on garment shape. With dramatic designs and her own distinctive look, she paved the way for fashion as theatre and entertainment.

We chat about dressing international stars including Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross, Barbara Streisand and Jackie Kennedy, as well as British Royalty, most notably, Princess Diana and Princess Anne… and I cheekily ask her if, given the opportunity, what she would design for the current Princess of Wales…

She talks about how her big career break was in the 70s, meeting two Ukrainian models who persuaded her to take her collection out to America where they were sure they could find her a backer… she arrived in New York with a letter of introduction to Diana Vreeland who fell in love with her designs and instantly commissioned a huge shoot for Vogue starring Natalie Wood…and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Rhodes grew up in Kent and was surrounded by fashion from an early age as her mother was a pattern cutter for The House of Worth. She would quietly watch the bridal fittings and appear in the children’s section of the shows. She evolved her own style including her love of pink hair and a dramatic eye…and always has, and still does, wear the clothes she has designed.

In 2020 she formed the Zandra Rhodes Foundation, a charity that ensures future generations of designers, artists, researchers, students and educators are able to study her life and designs, with an emphasis on her methods and techniques. Dating from the mid 1960s to the current day, the Foundation is working to catalogue her six thousand garments, printed textiles, drawings, accessories, fashion films, kodatraces, silk screens, press

Sophia Neophitou
Creative director, Roland Mouret and Warren Noronha
As well as working as a stylist on a national newspaper and publishing and editing her own magazine, 10, an ultra-glossy, fashion-obsessed quarterly, Sophia Neophitou makes time to consult on the collections of two London-based designers, Warren Noronha and Roland Mouret. She is a formidable force. She has worked with Noronha since he set up on his own in 2000, and is just embarking on her second season with Mouret, a Frenchman who makes grown-up clothes designed with women like her in mind.
'He identified me as someone who would buy and wear his clothes and take them through different stages of the day,' she says. Her current favourite outfit is a drapey, silk jersey Callaghan dress, worn with an army Parka over the top, and high heels. She never veers far from what most women might class as evening wear, even when she is working. It is this way of dressing - both formal and casual - that fascinates Mouret, and was reflected in the collection he showed in September at the old Saatchi Gallery in north London. 'He said he wanted a woman's perspective. He was nervous that I would come in and say, "I hate this," or be too heavy handed. But I'll only work with clothes I really believe in. It's a really big trust thing.'
Already they have discussed fabrics and colours for the next collection. 'He comes with swatches and asks, "How do you see colours for next season? How do you see fashion going?"' Fashion editors like Neophitou, 36, have a much more rounded view on the season. Designers often operate in more of a vacuum. As well as being her own little fashion forecasting centre, Neophitou finds inspiration outside fashion. 'You could go to a fab flea market in Barcelona and bring something back, or sneak into St Martins' library and pretend to be a student. People are your best inspirati

LONDON — Nearly everything in Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou’s world is outsized, from her impossibly high Alaïa heels to the coils of black hair so long they spill over her shoulders and into the back of her black Chalayan coat; her big throaty laugh to her ambitions for 10 magazine, the love of her professional life.

Even in London, a city packed with big media personalities, Neophitou-Apostolou stands out. The founder, publisher and editor in chief of 10 oversees her own indie media group, Zac Publishing Ltd., which is named after her son. The glossy magazine comes out twice a year, while 10 Men is also biannual. There’s an editorial web site and an e-commerce site called 10 Curates that sells high-end, high-brow merch ranging from original artwork, to art and photography books to earrings by Delfina Delettrez.

Then there’s 10+, a supersized, deconstructed magazine that launched in late 2018. It comes in its own box modeled on the old yellow ones from Kodak, and has multiple parts, including a stack of giant, fold-out posters based on the title’s lavish photo shoots. Neophitou-Apostolou calls it a “book-a-zine.”

Circulation is 90,000 and it’s entirely self-funded — Neophitou-Apostolou has never taken outside investment. The business, which counts most of the major luxury names as advertisers, is also profitable.

Neophitou-Apostolou, who also works as creative director for Roland Mouret and Antonio Berardi and who served as collection creative director for Victoria’s Secret for a decade, said she can’t afford any vanity projects. Indeed, it’s been such good business that she now owns, among other things, the five-story Georgian town house in London’s Soho that serves as 10’s headquarters.

Neophitou-Apostolou, a Londoner with a proud Greek heritage and a great sense of family, loves being in control. She’