Lasting appeal
Carla Zampatti has stuck to her style instincts in creating timeless favourites that bypass the fashion cycle and are cherished for years – even decades. By Zara Wong.
“Sunny … I can still see it,” starts Carla Zampatti. She is recalling walking into the dressmakers’ studio where her mother would have clothes made. It was the moment she first became aware of the world of fashion. “I guess, as a designer, I have a visual memory,” she says with a knowing smile. “It was filled with fabrics. There were three or four dressmakers there.” It sparked a sense of excitement in the then six-year-old Zampatti, who told her mother she knew that was what she would do when she grew up.
Zampatti would go on to try making and designing her own clothes based on Vogue patterns, experimenting with fashion to solidify her sense of style in her late teens. “Experimentation is so necessary. Find a brand that you think is you, try it on, look in the mirror – does it feel good? Yes. Do you look good? Do you look better? I think you know, deep down.”
Now acutely aware of her tastes, Zampatti can list off quickly what suits her. Separates – pants and tops. Jumpsuits – she has a collection of them. Black and white – she found comfort in them in her late teens, an elegant, dogmatically restrained palette that has become her personal signature.
“I started my career at a time when women were evolving. The pill had just launched and women were thinking about their own future, career and their own emancipation and I was part of that and really felt it,” she says. Women entering the workforce in accelerating numbers required a professional, corporate-appropriate wardrobe. “I designed for myself, too, in this sort of liberated way, but it also appealed to other women who were going through the same experience.”
The focus on tailoring has made it necessary for Zampatti’s clothes to be all made in Australia; her studio is filled with skilled pattern cutters and tailors who have made her pieces renowned for their fit. Zampatti is also an ambassador to The Social Outfit, which provides employment and training in the fashion manufacturing and retail industry to people from refugee and new migrant communities. “If you run a business, you respect your suppliers and they will give you great service, which will give you great product. People need to be paid properly. It’s mutually beneficially to look after people who look after you.”