Seamless takeover of fashion mum’s legacy for Bianca Spender

As Bianca Spender prepares to send her latest collection down the runway at Afterpay Australia Fashion Week, she can still hear her mum, Carla Zampatti, speaking to her.

Fashion designer Bianca Spender at her Double Bay store in Sydney. Picture: Elise Hassey

As Bianca Spender prepares to send her latest collection down the runway at Afterpay Australia Fashion Week, she can still hear her mum, Carla Zampatti, speaking to her.

The event marks the third year Spender will showcase her work without the late fashion icon by her side.

While Zampatti may not be able to share her years of wisdom with her daughter, Ms Spender knows she’s watching.

“Mum was a very vocal person – she’s still talking to me,” Spender tells Vogue’s podcast, Under the Gloss.

Spender is tight-lipped about her upcoming collection but after losing both her parents – Zampatti and former Liberal politician John Spender – within the space of 18 months, she says they are at the heart of her work.

“I’d never lost anyone really close to me,” she says. “Grief is a journey unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

“What added to it was the shock of it all. Mum’s passing was a very, very big time, and there was a very public component.

“Now there is this kind of pendulum that I waver. There’ll be moments where life travels along normally, and then there’ll be moments where I’m struck with an absence, and then there’ll be moments that I’m struck with a presence.”

The one constant helping bring light and comfort to her days is, quite simply, what she and Zampatti adored most: fashion.

Zampatti was the queen of tailored pantsuits. Spender shines in softly romantic pieces that drape and move with you.

“Whenever I went into mum’s wardrobe and wore things, I would always be turning them inside out or upside down,” Spender says. “I’d turn a skirt into a dress.

“I didn’t wear pants until I was 24 – and my mother was all about a jacket and pants. So it was quite a natural fit in the way we defined ourselves separately.”

Their complementary visions made for the perfect business partnership. Spender joined the family business in 2004 when she returned home from France on the basis that she was to design 20 pieces for a capsule collection. If it sold, she stayed; if it didn’t, she had to leave.

As history would have it, the capsule was a success, and it wasn’t long before Spender branched out on her own and officially bought her namesake label from her mum in 2019. This year, her brand is celebrating 15 years.

“I’ve worked in the Carla Zampatti office ever since I was nine years old, every single holiday,” Spender says. “I did every job – dispatch, cutting, sewing, marketing – except tax.”

Listen to the full podcast interview with Bianca Spender at Under the Gloss with Phoebe Burgess wherever you get your podcasts