Mum’s the word in Carla Zampatti’s return show

Taking the brand started by the late eponymous designer in 1965 to new audiences is essential to its new custodians.

Model Skye Burn in a Carla Zampatti creation, flanked by creative director Karlie Ungar and chief executive Alex Schuman. Picture: John Feder

For Alex Schuman, chief executive of Carla Zampatti, it has been something of a monkey on the back that the brand has not yet used the Carla Zampatti runway at Carriageworks in Sydney.

The rather cavernous space, pivotal to Australian Fashion Week, was named in honour of Schuman’s late mother, the eponymous and iconic designer behind the brand, who passed in 2021.

This is set to change in May where under the creative direction of Karlie Ungar, the brand returns to the official fashion week schedule for the first time since 2019.

It is not something Schuman and Ungar take lightly. Nor too the legacy of the brand that Zampatti started in 1965.

“Fashion Week is such an important part of the Australian fashion industry and it’s something that we are really passionate about…we really wanted to really make a statement and reestablish the brand as something that’s relevant and forward looking and take it to a fresh audience and bring it to everyone with fresh eyes,” says Schuman.

“We often say mum’s … fashion legacy doesn’t have a beginning, middle and end. It’s an enduring legacy,” he says.

“It’s very important that we remain relevant to the next generation of amazing fashion customers in Australia.”

The show follows an off-calendar runway show in 2023 as well as the Carla Zampatti Retrospective staged at the Powerhouse museum from November 2022 to March 2023.

It was preparing for this exhibition that offered Ungar a true insight into the impact of the brand.

“Its broad span of appeal across so many decades, so many women, so many sectors. There wasn’t a sector that Carla didn’t work with or touch across arts, politics, creativity, multiculturalism within her own immigration into the country. It is just super special,” she says

Part of the appeal for Ungar of showing at Australian fashion week is the opportunity to connect with new audiences.

The brand will be the first evening show of the week, and will also stage a ticketed consumer show directly afterward.

“There’s a lot of weight there in the person and in the heritage of the brand, but I think you’re so pushed on and so inspired by that, it needs to continue. You want to show it to a new generation. You want it to continue on with the interest level with the younger girls and to I think pass down in multi-generational interest into the brand. That’s another factor to having the consumer show, no other brand probably could take so many different groups of women, girls together on a night to go and attend a show like that,” she says.

The show in May, she says, will be about tightening up its themes and offering versatility and “contradictions” with pieces that can be styled in many different ways.

“We spend a lot of time expanding on what we know that [the customer] loves and taking those core elements of the classicism and the effortlessness and try and really push it forward in a new interpretation,” she says.

Natalie Xenita, vice president-managing director of IMG Fashion Events and Properties Asia-Pacific, which manages Australian Fashion Week, says the importance of the consumer side of fashion week, once solely an international trade show event, is increasing.

“[W]e understand the importance of the function of the event for the industry, but increasingly, consumers are an important audience for the designers to be able to tap into and leverage their participation in Australian Fashion Week as well to reach their audience of customers and new customers as well,” she says.

Having brands such as Carla Zampatti on the official schedule is, says Xenita, a measure of why Australian fashion week matters, no matter what stage a brand is in.

There’s also, as Schuman notes, the sheer thrill of putting on a show.

“Mum would often say, Australian creative and fashion designers are as good as you’ll find anywhere in the world. She was very passionate about this and Karlie and I are really passionate about the Australian industry. It’s incredibly important. We have these moments to celebrate and promote Australian fashion because it is a launchpad to the rest of the world,” he says.

Australian Fashion Week will run from May 13-17 at Sydney’s Carriageworks. australianfashionweek.com