The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Australian fashion icon Carla Zampatti, known for elegant designs and efforts to empower women over more than half a century, has died aged 78 after a fall in Sydney, her family said on Saturday.
Actors Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett, as well as former prime minister Julia Gillard, were among the influential Australians who wore the clothes of Zampatti, hospitalised last week after a fall at an outdoor opera performance.
“She continued to thrive as a businesswoman through enormous radical and social change, designing clothes for women fighting for liberation through the women’s rights movement in the 1960s to empowering women today,” the family said in a statement.
In the early 1970s Zampatti became one of the first designers to introduce swimwear into her collections in then socially conservative Australia.
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Born in Italy in 1942, before her family emigrated to Australia in 1950, Zampatti produced her first small fashion collection in 1965 before setting up Carla Zampatti Pty Ltd five years later.
“It is amazing what you can do with an incredible amount of youthful optimism and very little money,” Zampatti told the Australian Associated Press in 2009.
A savvy businesswoman who opened dozens of boutiques across Australia, Zampatti held several directorships, and served as chairwoman of Australian public service broadcaster the Special Broadcasting Service.
“We have lost a truly great and inspirational Australian,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement, adding that Zampatti was not only a fashion industry icon but a pioneer as an entrepreneur and a champion of a multicultural approach.
“Her contribution to our nation will be timeless, just like her designs.”
On Zampatti’s online memorial page, a customer who identified herself only as Louise wrote, “It is true of every piece I wear from the CZ line-I feel confident, elegant and empowered....Thank you for the years of inspiration.”
Zampatti was the mother of three children from two marriages and a grandmother of nine, her family said.
By Lidia Kelly. Edit by Clarence Fernandez.
Fashion brands are edging in on the world’s largest gathering of design professionals and their wealthy clients, but design companies still dominate the sector, which is ripe for further consolidation, reports Imran Amed.
Blocking the deal would set a new precedent for fashion M&A in the US and leave Capri Holdings in a precarious position as it attempts to turn around its Michael Kors brand.
After preserving his fashion empire’s independence for decades, the 89 year-old designer is taking a more open stance to M&A.
The sharp fall in the yen, combined with a number of premium brands not adjusting their prices to reflect the change, has created a rare opportunity to grab luxe goods at a discount.