Chennai’s Tambour and designer Zandra Rhodes collaborate on a limited-edition line of pashminas

Dame Zandra Rhodes against a backdrop punctuated with pink tulips and roses. Her sharp pink bob, electric blue eyeliner and ruffled sleeves add to the riot of colour to the setting at Evoluzione. It is all very befitting of this iconic British designer’s aesthetic and flamboyant prints. 

“It is exciting to have an excuse to be here, in Chennai,” Zandra says. In collaboration with Annie Titus Mammen’s Tambour, a Chennai-based embroidery and design house that has worked with several European luxury houses, Zandra is in the city to unveil a collection of 150 handcrafted pashmina stoles, featuring her hand-drawn prints.  

In conversation with Vikram Phadke, architect and interior designer, Zandra speaks of her association with Annie Titus and Tambour, beginning in 1985 when they worked on a collection of beaded dresses. “Those exquisite hand-beaded dresses created in India were then sold across the USA, the UK and Europe. We then went on to create a revolutionary collection of saris together. There is nothing like the sari and I hope it continues to remain a wonderful thing,” she says. 

Calling these past collaborations with Annie a ‘wonderful adventure’, Zandra speaks of how she finds designing clothes very exciting, and representative of how one sees the world.

“It is lovely to work with Zandra because she is very hands-on. I have collaborated with her for many years, so I understand her vision,” says Annie. 

The limited-edition collection of stoles spotlight some of Zandra’s most celebrated archival prints, which include the painted lady and bows, which first appeared in her Painted Lady Collection from 1978, and peacock feathers from the India Revisited collection of 1985. The soft pashmina shawls, which feature intricate embroidery have been crafted across 35 colourways, in soothing pinks, lavenders and yellows as well as deeper blues and crisp white. 

At the showcase, curated by Annie, Shilpa Patel and Tina Malhotra of Evoluzione, guests study the calligraphy on the stoles (handwritten extracts from Cicely Mark Barker’s Flower Fairy), stripy flowers and trails which Zandra sketched inspired by a trip to Kenya, and debate how best to style the collection. 

Every archival print comes with a memorable story. Among the highlights is the pale-pink chiffon Buttons and Bows dress she designed for Princess Diana, which the princess wore during a visit to Japan. “It is wonderful having these memories; I remember Freddie Mercury coming into my little studio in 1975. He stood in front of the mirror, wearing the white pleated batwing-sleeved top, to test how it would feel and move when he was onstage,” she recalls. 

British singer Suki Waterhouse more recently, modelled a version of Zandra’s Buttons and Bows dress from 1986 and onscreen fashion icon Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) from Sex And The City too has been known to favour the designer in two instances, in 2003 and 2025.   

“My staff in London in their mid-twenties often come in wearing a new piece of mine and tell me they got it off a vintage platform. It is inspiring that people are looking towards that, and shows that they really can still treasure things and not always have to have everything brand new so that it is using up the planet,” she says. 

Calling India an inspirational country, Zandra says that there is a different way here of looking at everything: “I think it really probably is from India that we’re going to get new ideas now because I think a lot of the rest of the world has got very tired. So, I’m hoping I’m going to get more work here.”

The limited-edition collection of stoles is available at Evoluzione, KNK Road. Prices upwards of ₹21,000