One of Australia’s most successful fashion brands is just getting started
The siblings behind Camilla and Marc proudly celebrate two decades of their namesake brand with expansion plans and a sharpened sense of creative purpose.
In the days leading up to the opening of Camilla and Marc’s new flagship boutique in Sydney’s Woollahra, people kept knocking on the window.
Many of them had known siblings Camilla Freeman-Topper and Marc Freeman since they were children growing up in the area. Most wanted to know if they could at least unpack some boxes or something.
“It was parents’ friends, saying, ‘Do you remember me?’ and kids we’ve grown up with,” says Freeman on a tour of the new store just before it opened.
“People just feel genuinely attached to the brand. And they’ve been on that journey with us for so long … there’s just a lot of history there,” reflects Freeman-Topper on a call with WISH a few weeks later.
Building a community around the brand, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary, was always part of the plan. Well, it would have been if they’d actually had a plan when the pair launched their clothing label two decades ago.
“We were young when we started. We were 23 and 21. And while we may not have sat down and had a long, detailed, formulated business plan, we had certainly spent the prior 20 or so years talking about who we were and who we wanted to be and the kind of business that we wanted to create and where we wanted to go,” says Freeman.
“So I think we were lucky a bit, to be so close in age and such great friends that we were able to have those candid conversations that created what I would say a mind map and a cultural understanding of how we wanted to behave and what we wanted to build together.
“And I think those tenets still stand today. Perhaps documented in a more structured way for a large team, [but] we’re very much continuing to build on the foundations that we created at home in our father’s house some 20 years ago.”
The siblings have always been close. “Marc was always my protector, I think. And we had a lot of fun as we grew up. He used to help me with anything,” says Freeman-Topper. This included, initially quite begrudgingly, helping Camilla date his friends. In fact she ended up marrying one of them.
They became closer when they lost their beloved mother, Pamela, to ovarian cancer when the siblings were 11 and 13 respectively. She was just 42.
“She was an incredible human being. She was a preschool teacher who had a very gentle, kind, patient spirit, and Marc certainly inherited her patience gene. She never had a bad word to say about anybody. She loved life and she loved learning and she loved being challenged, and she loved family and traditions and had very high moral standards and ethics and a very strong sense of self,” says Freeman-Topper.
“What she imparted on us was formative,” adds Freeman.
The pair honour their mother in the clothes they make – clothes that last, that suit women with full lives, that are made with integrity. Freeman-Topper says her mother and grandmother have long been her own style inspirations.
“My mother’s mother had pretty much her entire wardrobe made-to-measure, so she had impeccable style. I guess that imprinted on me the value of timeless keepsakes, because she never threw anything away. She always kept everything. And it wasn’t from a hoarding perspective, because she didn’t have lots. What she had was well made and good quality, and I guess that is part of the Camilla and Marc brand vision. So that was hugely inspiring from a very, very young age.”
The pair honour their mother too, and other women and families who went through what they did, in their commitment to women’s health. In 2020 the brand launched Ovaries: Talk About Them, a campaign that supports the work of Professor Caroline Ford at the UNSW Ovarian Cancer Research Group, in raising money for ovarian cancer research. Since its launch the campaign has raised $1.7 million, with 100 per cent of the profits from the brand’s Ovaries: Talk About Them capsule collections donated towards funding the world’s first early detection test for ovarian cancer. It is estimated the first test will get to clinical trials within two years.
“I think we’ve identified that there’s much-needed attention that needs to go into women’s health, specifically ovarian cancer and the lack of funding and attention for an early detection test for ovarian cancer. It took us a while to find the right partner, and we’re working with Professor Caroline Ford and the team at UNSW who are doing groundbreaking research and we’re really hopeful. They’ve made some great progress,” says Freeman.
“It’s a very complicated problem, but we’re really hopeful that they are, with the help of us and all the people who have supported us today, helping to solve this problem. Hopefully, maybe some young kids like us don’t go through what we went through.”
For Freeman, visiting Ford’s labs has been a source of immense fascination (“Marc’s a science geek,” chimes in Freeman-Topper).
“I think it’s really nice to collaborate with someone in a different field who’s at the top of their field,” says Freeman. “They are doing really cutting-edge research … I think the partnership has been really enriching.”
Family remains at the centre of the business. The siblings and their families holiday together every year. They truly do spend most of their time together. They also really, really love each other. “I’ve watched Marc for 20 years have patience with me, but now I’m watching him as a father … I’ll catch myself thinking, ‘How would Marc react?’,” says Freeman-Topper of what she admires most about her brother.
“He’s also incredibly intelligent and incredibly curious. I think curiosity is one of the most important things in humans, and I think that ensures he’s constantly growing as a man and he’s kind and incredibly generous and non-judgmental, which I think is also a very important trait.”
Freeman is equally as effusive in his praise for his sister. “I guess she’s probably my best mate, best friend. We’re lucky. I think we’re both lucky to have such a great relationship and we can rely on one another, in a way that I think is rare. Camilla really also does everything she puts her mind to. I think it’s a really unique ability to grasp a big idea and chase it, and get it. She’s got a good sense of humour. She’s got an amazing moral compass,” he says.
Which is not to say they don’t disagree.
So how are issues resolved? “Best argument wins,” says Freeman-Topper.
“I think that it’s actually very important and very healthy to have healthy conversations that come from different ideas. So I think it would be utterly boring if we weren’t challenging each other, and challenging our ideas. But we always come to an agreement very, very quickly. It is never heated. It’s always, I’ll put my case forward, he’ll put his case forward and whatever the most sensible one, we usually end up going with that.”
Connection within families is something the brand often sees in its boutiques, too.
“We have a very, very strong mother-daughter customer. We read the end-of-day reports from stores, and some of them are even grandmothers, daughters and granddaughter groups, which is just gorgeous. It’s never been about [ages], it’s always about just offering something for multiple generations,” says Freeman-Topper.
The process of creativity, of making something, is a source of solace for Freeman-Topper. One of her aunts taught her to sew in the last few months of her mother’s life, when family had gathered, and everyone was sitting together. The methodical, meditative ritual of it became a salve.
“When you’re sewing, you’ve actually got time to think and sit with your thoughts. And so I think it was quite therapeutic, very therapeutic. It wasn’t like I was going out and socialising and distracting myself from the pain that was actually going on around us. It was probably very healthy to sit in that dark time,” she says.
The first thing Freeman-Topper made was a black taffeta pencil skirt. Later at school, before studying fashion design in Italy, she sold the sarongs she made at market stalls with her friends.
The creative process is something she still loves. Sewing is something she misses.
“I think the process [of building out a collection] is very creative and we try and make sure it’s inspiring for, not just for Marc and I, but also the team,” she says.
“We’ll start the season, whether it’s an inspiration trip, or drawing inspiration from architecture or art or nature. We’re constantly sourcing vintage. For example, a lot of our prints are sourced from vintage archives in Italy, and we’ll trawl vintage markets overseas, whether it’s in Paris or London, LA, wherever we are in the world. That’s sort of the beginning. And then in 2022 we introduced our ‘manifesto’. It’s a process where we [initiate] design conversations around creativity, of course, but also equally about responsibility and making sure that we’re choosing a path that has a lower environmental impact and considering at every stage how we can be responsible from design, production, to overarching creative, or even to retail. So we’re constantly working with that and making sure that we’re checking in,” she says.
Hitting 20 years in the notoriously fickle fashion industry is something the siblings are taking deliberate pause to recognise.
“I try and stop and reflect often. I really do. Because if you don’t, then I think you lose it. You need to, it is important. It keeps you grounded,” says Freeman-Topper.
“I agree. Big things are built with small blocks and small steps, so I think you’ve got to enjoy and relish small things as well as big things. I think that’s also what keeps things really interesting and why we have such an amazing passion for what we’re doing. In many ways, I think we both feel like we’re just getting started. We’ve done so much and there’s so much to do,” adds Freeman.
Some of those things include launching jewellery as a category, with inspiration taken from heirlooms they inherited from their mother and grandmother, and expanding the brand’s international presence. Camilla and Marc, which won the 2022 Australian Fashion Laureate Designer of the Year award, now has 14 stand-alone stores in Australia. In February it launched a store-in-store in Paris’s luxurious Le Bon Marché, adding to its presence in the likes of Harrods, Selfridges and SSENSE. The brand hosts showrooms (and famously fun dinners and parties) during Paris Fashion Week, where they say buyers still remain surprised by Australian style.
“I think there still is this misconception internationally about what Australian style is … that we’re all surf and bikini-clad, and that exists, but also, whether we’re going to work or we’re going out, we’ve got great style. And so I think when we take the brand overseas, whether it’s to a new buyer, or a new customer, they’re really surprisingly excited and welcome us with open arms,” says Freeman.
Ultimately, the pair feel content. With how far they’ve come, and what they’re putting out in the world.
“I do think that Ovaries: Talk About Them is probably our most incredible achievement. That’s something that we created to honour our mother and other women and children from losing their mothers or husbands losing their wives or parents losing their children. So it’s very close to our heart and incredibly humbling that we’ve been able to raise as much as we have raised,” Freeman-Topper says.
“And I think another thing that we’re proud of is hoping to make women’s lives just easier by providing them with great wardrobe solutions that they don’t have to think too much about.”
This story is from the March issue of WISH.
