Christopher Esber makes his debut alongside evolution, not revolution at Paris Fashion Week

The Australian designer joins the likes of Colette Dinnigan and Zimmermann in marking this significant moment.

Models walk for Australian designer Christopher Esber at Paris Fashion Week.

Though the eyes of the world were on him as he debuted on the biggest stage in fashion, Christopher Esber was preternaturally calm.

“It was kind of like business as usual, in a way. The only differences now, there’s just more reach,” the 36-year-old designer says from Paris where he showed for the first time on the official fashion week schedule.

The calm serenity belies the significance of the moment – for Australian fashion, and for Esber.

Only a handful of homegrown labels have been invited by the governing body, Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, to show in Paris, including Colette Dinnigan and Zimmermann.

Christopher Esber says showing on the Paris Fashion Week official schedule has long been his dream. Picture: Blake Azar

Thirteen years into his own label, the former TAFE graduate, who first showed at Australian fashion week in 2010, has realised a long-held goal. “It’s always been the dream to show in Paris, starting at design school,” he says.

To a crowd of around 200 at the Cite De L’architecture Et Du Patrimoine, he showed draped and wrapped dresses, and tops with woolly fringing that appeared as scarves haphazardly tied around the body. Esber described it as “a raw sense of glamour”, with an intuitive, primal element his starting point.

“What was this idea of getting dressed? And the first thing you put on in the morning, from maybe underwear through to a loincloth,” he says, thinking of the first-ever clothing. “How do you wrap things around your body, what is your first instinct? I wanted it to feel ­really kind of effortless and just kind of instinctual.”

Inside the cave-like show space, natural semiprecious stone accents caught the light details Esber has become known for – a signal he wasn’t aiming to reinvent the wheel. “It was important to ­really be true to the brand and show what people know us for.

“But there are moments of what the future looks like.”

This included the debut of bags. Focusing on the manipulation of leather, clutches that appeared as wrapped stones were moulded using a technique of wrapping. They were made in the same Portuguese factory as Spanish luxury label Loewe.

Christopher Esber at Paris Fashion Week.

For Esber, whose technical background began in tailoring, Paris is an opportunity to flex design muscle as well as an acknowledgment of the label’s growth in Europe. The brand is stocked in Galleries Lafayette and Printemps among others.

On a day that included Rick Owens, Schiaparelli, Givenchy and Chloe, does he plan to join them each season? “Most definitely, this is only just the start.”

Christopher Esber at Paris Fashion Week.

The serene, grounded mood Esber presented chimed with the prevailing one at a Paris Fashion Week thus far stripped of the hard-edged glamour of seasons past.

The first signal was at Saint Laurent, where creative director Anthony Vaccarello formed an entire collection around a house icon – the safari jacket or “Saharien”, made famous in the 1970s by model Veruschka.

Paris Fashion Week continues until Tuesday, with Chanel, Zimmermann and Louis Vuitton still to show.