Dame Joan Collins is a timeless style icon, and in a new interview with HELLO!, the glamorous 92-year-old actress has shared a wonderful story about her love of fashion.
“Everybody who knows me knows that I design most of my clothes,” she tells us.
Dame Joan Collins
The star shot to fame as the feisty character Alexis Carrington in the hit 80s soap opera Dynasty, and in this exclusive chat, Dame Joan reminisces about her early days in Hollywood.
Joan spoke to us ahead of her upcoming appearance on Shooting Star Children’s Hospices’ new podcast – the charity for which she is Vice President.
© Andy Newbold & Mark LewisDame Joan Collins is the Vice President of Shooting Star Children’s Hospices
Hollywood style
“Some of the dresses that I wore in the first pictures of me in Hollywood were things that I designed myself and had made by this company of two young men called Darnells,” Dame Joan reveals.
“They made loads of things for me because I didn’t like the stuff in the stores – I thought it was drab.”
© GettyJoan Collins on the set of Dynasty in 1988
She adds: “When I did Dynasty, [the costume designer] Nolan Miller – who was tiny bit old fashioned in his designs – I got him into the 1980s with peplums, small waists, big shoulders, and big jewelry.
“He took a lot of my ideas, and a lot of them are in the thousands and thousands of outfits I wore in Dynasty.”
© GettyDynasty actresses Joan Collins and actress Linda Evans attend the 35th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in 1983
Early passion for fashion
Dame Joan’s love of clothes began in her childhood.
“It started with me as a very young girl, I would imagine at 10 or 11,” she recalls. “I was fascinated by my mother’s fashion magazines and then I started to draw.
“I designed dresses for my mother and my aunts. They all had a dressmaker, so I would design dresses for them.”
© Getty ImagesJoan Collins stars with Laurence Harvey in the film ‘I Believe In You’ in 1952
“And then the new look came around, which was a very radical change of clothes and done by Christian Dior. I loved that, so I would do a lot of drawings of that.”
She continues: “I spent a lot of time going to the big local library on Marylebone Road, [but] it doesn’t exist anymore. I’d look through all the fashion books from the 1920s and 1800s and draw. I was always interested.”
The Shooting Star Podcast will be available this spring on all major podcast platforms. For updates, follow @sschospices or visit shootingstar.org.uk