Carla Zampatti’s children open up about the impact of her passing

Words: Glynis Traill-Nash Producer: Bianca Farmakis

For the first time since their mother’s shock death following a fall at the opera, Carla Zampatti’s three children, Alexander Schuman, Allegra and Bianca Spender, have opened up about the impact of her passing, their hopes for her enduring legacy and the question that has fascinated fashion circles.

What will happen to the business that has dressed Australian women for 56 years, including its most powerful and celebrated?

Video: Instagram/@CarlaZampatti

March, 2021

Attending the opening night of La Traviata outdoors on Sydney Harbour, the 78-year-old was photographed on the red carpet wearing a deep blue evening dress and pearl jewellery with her signature sunglasses. Later in the night, in a terrible accident, Zampatti fell down the bottom steps of the temporary seating structure, hitting her head.

“That was really a very private week, where we genuinely thought she was going to recover.”

— Alexander Schuman

Zampatti’s death shocked the nation and beyond. The rich and powerful – Prime Minister Scott Morrison, her dear friend Dame Quentin Bryce, even British star Nigella Lawson – paid tribute. Within days, her children were preparing for a state funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral.

The funeral

The funeral was a Who’s Who from the worlds of fashion, business, the arts, media and politics, with former ­foreign minister Julie Bishop opting for a navy feather-trimmed cocktail dress, the same style worn by Allegra on the day.

“Every time I sat down to write for the eulogy, I would be drowning in tears and couldn’t put a word down. Allegra and Alex could find words that I couldn’t and then I found my words in the end.”

— Bianca Spender. Carla Zampatti's youngest daughter

The conundrum of continuity

For many looking in from the outside, the question emerged: what will happen to the brand without Carla at the helm? Australia doesn't have a great track record of independent brands with a designer’s name on the shopfront flourishing without them. Among Zampatti’s peers from the ’60s to the ’80s, few businesses are still going, let alone thriving.

Some assumed Bianca, a successful designer in her own right, would be the obvious heir to head up the design team. Prior to launching her ­eponymous label, she was a senior designer within Zampatti’s team and her label was part of the greater family business before she broke away in 2017.

A succession plan

That succession plan involves all three siblings working together to continue her business and her broader legacy. Zampatti’s design team, many of whom had worked alongside her for decades, will continue to design the collections.

All three siblings will be on the board of the fashion label. While Allegra and Bianca consider themselves “guardians” of Carla’s legacy, in design terms they will keep across the process to make sure that it still “feels” like her. It’s common practice in fashion houses in Europe and beyond to bring in a name designer to head up the brand, but Alex says that won’t be the path they take.

Alex thinks his mother’s story resonated so strongly thanks in part to her background, as a young girl coming to Australia in the post-war period from a non-English-speaking background. “It makes me incredibly proud that I’m from that stock. But it’s a daunting legacy to have to follow, of course. We have to get it right,” he says.

The future

The trio are clear on preserving what their mother stood for: women, multicultural Australia, and the arts. These are the areas that will be the focus for charitable and philanthropic support via the Carla Zampatti Foundation. As for keeping their mother’s legacy alive in the seams of her garments, the siblings strive to strike a balance between protecting the values she encapsulated and not “living in the past”.

“One of mum’s greatest qualities was actually her openness to change and learning and newness. So we need to strike that balance, between doing what mum did […] but at the same time not trying to live in the past.”