Watch Borough Culinary Code: Take a look around the market that is a cornucopia of delights and sample some choice cuts of meat at Roast

Watch Borough Culture Code: Explore Zandra Rhodes’s boudoir and check out saws and scalpels in Britain’s oldest operating theatre

THE Borough apartment of Zandra Rhodes is an Aladdin’s Cave. If Aladdin was a drag queen with an eye for colour and a taste for the psychedelic. “I live for colour,” says the sixtysomething fashion designer, toying with a strand of her bright pink hair. “No, it’s not my natural colour but I’ve been dying it for so long I don’t even know what natural is any more. And who cares anyway?”

Rhodes erupted on to the fashion scene in 1969 with her punk aesthetic. Since then she’s designed for Diana, Princess of Wales, created opera sets and appeared in The Archers. Controversially, she lends her name to a fur collection. Her recent catwalk return was hailed by some and slated by others. “That’s fashion, darling,” she says, casting a critical eye over my preppy garb. Her home is as kaleidoscopic as her designs and, arguably, more loved by the locals. After meeting the architect Ricardo Legorreta she persuaded him to undertake his first UK commission. The result is a luminous orange landmark on Bermondsey Street, an olive stone’s throw from foodie heaven at Borough Market.

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The local Fashion and Textile Museum incorporates the Academy for Fashion, Textiles and Jewellery. “We’re training the next generation – things have always been created here and still are. Borough is full of warehouses and workshops.” Rhodes nests atop all this like a multicoloured magpie amid the glittering clutter of her lifetime in fashion. Her apartment has a swath of rooms and a roof terrace bedecked with camellias. Far from being a monument to vanity, this is her tribute to SE1. “It’ll be here long after me and my clothes are gone and forgotten.” Rhodes bought the place as a shell before the current boom. “I suppose it was a savvy move. I love living here because it’s not all about mindless consumption. I know who to go and chat to if I am having a special dinner party. This is a friendly little part of town.”

The Jam Factory is another local landmark. Its giant chimney once heated fires to make the jam sticking to breakfast tables across the nation. It’s now flats selling for six-figure sums to City workers. Several council estates sit near by. “It’s a mixed area,” says Sarah-Jane Aitken-head, of the estate agent Stirling Ackroyd. “But it’s not rough.” You can pick up a one-bedroom former council flat for under £200,000. South Borough, supposedly known as SoBo, is the most affordable end as it’s next to the soon-to-be-made-over Elephant and Castle.

“Borough needs to be affordable and colourful,” insists Rhodes. Pink or orange?

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