Quite simply, there are none more accomplished than designer and businesswoman Carla Zampatti AC. The executive chairman of the eponymous label she created in 1965, she is also trustee of the Sydney Theatre Company Foundation Trust, a board member of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, chairman of the SBS Corporation, director of the Westfield Group and trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She received a Centenary Medal in 2001 and is a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic along with being a Member of the Order of Australia, which was raised to Companion level in 2009. She even has her own postage stamp, not to mention the Australian Fashion Laureate, a designer eyewear line with Polaroid, multiple fragrances as well as redesigning a car in partnership with Ford Australia. Phew.
By Jo Casamento
The adage you can’t have it all doesn’t apply to one of Australia’s most successful women, designing empress Carla Zampatti.
At 72, Zampatti laughs that her label — celebrating it’s golden 50th anniversary milestone with a devoted following spanning from 17- to 70-year-olds in over 30 boutiques across the nation as well as in David Jones — is getting younger as she gets older. It’s no mean feat and her story, which began in Lovero, Italy, is a fascinating one.
The multi-award winning business woman with a string of titles after her name and awards on her shelf, as well as a successful real estate portfolio, has a busier calendar than ever. And there are no plans for retirement. Zampatti jokes she will go to her grave with a sketchbook in her hand, laughing “designer’s don’t retire, they die on the job!”
Apart from her glittering career, which has spanned five decades (her first collection launched in 1965) she also has three children: Alexander Schuman, from her first marriage to Leo Schuman, is an economist who works for the Treasury. Allegra Spender, the managing director of her company, and Bianca Spender, a successful designer in her own right, are both from her 35-year marriage to politician John Spender.
So what is her secret?
“Help,” she states honestly.
“Help. I look at Gail Kelly, and she’s done even better with triplets. Isn’t that efficient? I love women who do a full family in one go;
Margaret Thatcher was another — I think it’s part of their efficiency. They get it all done at once!”
Disputing the theory I run by her that perhaps you can have it all but not at the same time, the ever-effervescent Zampatti shakes her head emphatically.
“You can do it at the same time, but you need help. I do believe life is about compromise. If you want to do more than one thing at the same time — you know you’re not going to do it perfectly and you have to be prepared to compromise. If you’re a perfectionist and you want to be a perfect mother, a perfect everything else — it’s not possible. You have to concentrate on doing that one task.
“If you believe, as I did from an early age, you want a career but I always wanted to be married and have a husband and have children as well, I learned very quickly you need to learn to compromise.”
Zampatti is unique in her honesty. She owns her own flaws, admitting with an admirable self-awareness domesticity has never been her strength. There’s no inner-Nigella here and she bravely admits that for a time she didn’t think she was a great mother.
“At the time I didn’t think I was a great mother because no one was working quite at the pace I was. But since then I actually believe although you’re not there every minute of the day, quality time is more important than quantity. If you are rushing around, and cooking is another thing I don’t do very well, and I was probably not a great mother but they’ve turned out well!”
Zampatti reveals that as a single mother with a new business and a one-year-old after she split with her first husband, Leo, she contemplated whether to send her son to live with her mother in Western Australia. But she received this great advice from a psychologist friend:
“That quality time was more important than quantity time. She made it really clear that making that time we were together was really important for him to grow up well adjusted — rather than sending him off for someone else to look after. She said, ‘Don’t. He’ll never forgive you’. So I spent quality time with him and had someone responsible look after him in the meantime.”
The only way Zampatti could make that work was with a live-in nanny for 12 years.
“Every woman feels guilty and somewhere along the line you have to make a decision and get over it — because it’s not going to help anybody feeling guilty. I needed to earn a living. If I couldn’t afford to retire at that time, I needed to earn a living to keep my child as I didn’t have maintenance and I didn’t want maintenance. I wanted to be independent.”
Not one to fall to pieces, Zampatti restarted her business after her first divorce, when she sold her shares in the business back to her ex-husband, using her life savings and borrowing money from a “wonderful cousin” because the banks wouldn’t lend her money.
“I had to work, it wasn’t a choice. After my divorce when I was in the situation of having to earn a living to look after myself and my son I realised how difficult it must be for women without a career who are in a difficult and sometimes violent marriage and would love to get out of it but couldn’t because they have no money and no place to go. That really brought it home to me how important it was for every woman to be financially independent. Freedom is the most valuable gift anyone can give you.”
Even later in her career when she married a second time (by then big brother Alexander was seven) and she could have afforded to not work, she never thought of leaving the business.
“Success you get hooked on. I stopped feeling guilt a long time ago. When I knew deep down — because I did have a choice of staying home in my second marriage — but John did not pressure me [to stay home] to do so, ever. I thought, I’m not working for the financial aspect anymore. I knew I would not enjoy not having a career. I needed it. I had too much energy and too much to give to stay home and be a housewife. It wasn’t enough for me. If you know you can do something, why wouldn’t you?”
“Every mother at the young ages will hear from their children, ‘Why can’t you be there?’, particularly when I was running late for their sport or forgetting or not turning up or whether they were unwell and they wanted me home and they had the nanny but they wanted me, but eventually — when they were in their late teens and twenties — they said, ‘Mum, you would have been a disaster at home and driven us mad; what we learned from you is that to succeed you have to work really hard’!”
And she’s in no mood to stop creating. In fact, she has still maintained her childlike enthusiasm for frocks, despite the decades. “I feel like I’m back in my childhood — it’s my fantasy world of my childhood being relived. My life really played out how I dreamed it.
Those dreams started a long way away, her upbringing in the stunningly beautiful surrounds of Lovero, Italy, a small village nestled deep in the valley of snow-capped mountains that eventually form the Swiss Alps.
It was here she was schooled and her earliest memories formed. She arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia, as a nine-year-old. Her father had decided there was no solution to the endless wars happening in Europe and with her aunt as well as uncles and grandparents who had been to Australia the link, the family emigrated here, leaving Italy in deep snow in February and arriving in WA in scorching heat. “I loved it, I thought it was such fun, there was no trauma — as soon as I got on the boat I got into the mood of it,” she recalls. “It was so adventurous.”
There’s no doubt her migrant story shapes her, and she attributes much of her success from the beauty she was inspired by in her childhood coupled with the work ethic of her mother. It’s a potent mix.
Not only is she grateful she inherited her mother’s half-glass-full approach to life (even when she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed she can talk herself out of a bad mood, she says) but Zampatti also saw her mother working very hard, noting how effective she was. “My two brothers essentially looked after me, it was very good for me … they gave me a lot of responsibility.”
She thinks coming from another country does give you that added impetus to succeed. “There’s no baggage when you arrive in a new country — it’s not which school you went to, where your family came from. You’re brand new, you’re fresh and it’s up to you, and that’s why so many newcomers succeed. They see the opportunity.”
But it was her own light-bulb moment, the moment where her insatiable passion for fashion was sparked, which began the incredible journey. She recalls that exact moment as a five year old with perfect clarity.
“My mother took me to a dressmaker one day,” she recalls. “And I just instantly knew it was where I wanted to be … it was an instant love affair.
I’ve never fallen in love with anybody like that!”
The magical experience, together with her fascination with wonderful Italian frescoes sparked by the “luxurious and exquisite” frescoes on the walls and the ceilings in the church in her small village, meant she knew that day she would eventually become a fashion designer.
“The fabrics, the beauty, creating beauty. I love beautiful things. I would look at those frescoes and look at the drapery and the colours and think ‘isn’t that so luxurious and beautiful’ and ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to have something like that to wear’. And that’s where I think probably the beauty element started. And then when my mother took me to her dressmaker — I realised it was physically possible to do. I still go back to them as a reference point mentally for colour combinations — pale blue and brown and pinks. It was just magical; I can recall registering that information, not knowing how I would use it, but thinking, how beautiful. That was the moment.”
She still gets a thrill when she does a collection and people love it, admitting her life has been blessed. “The support has been absolutely wonderful from both people helping me in the business or working for me and customers supporting me. I’m so spoilt. I’m so privileged, and I’m so grateful.”
Image: Carla Zampatti Spring/Summer 15/16 Show
Winning the Qantas Business Woman of the Year Award at the end of 1980 was a turning point, she admits, in terms of self-belief. “Fashion has always been regarded as a cottage industry — never to be taken too seriously — the rag trade. I just realised what I was doing was a business like any other business. The elements I was applying to my business were exactly as you would for another larger business. From that, all other things happened. Being asked to do the motorcar for Ford — being asked to speak at the National Press Club — it really opened up my life in a way. I became as a brand better known and probably better respected and so it was a hugely momentous award for me.”
And her successful real estate portfolio she also puts down to her Italian heritage:
“I’m Italian and Italians understand real estate … I believe it’s the Italian in me. I do believe Italians are both creative and business savvy.”
Home ownership was a priority and along with good timing, Zampatti admits she made some shrewd real estate investments. “The timing was probably good in terms of real estate; I had a cash flow and I thought, what will I invest in — I didn’t understand the stock market at all — so I thought I’d invest in my head office and so on. Once you succeed in doing something really quite well — I converted two terraces into my head office in Surry Hills and created my first retail outlet. I enjoyed refurbishing because you turn something ugly into something beautiful. So that’s how it all started. It just continued and grew as opportunities grew to the point that perhaps I overdid it in the end! But it didn’t send me broke. I must have pulled back early enough for it not to do that! It’s not as big as it used to be, I sold quite a lot and am concentrating on other investments now.”
And while there have been heartbreaking setbacks along the way from running out of money, not making a profit, investing in things that nearly made her broke, bad deliveries, divorces and bad investments, through it all Zampatti has maintained bucketloads of optimism, her daily mantra to focus on the positive.
“Disappointment, well that happens in life. My advice with a setback is try and find a solution and move on. And if something is not working in a relationship — a personal or business one — by all means discuss it and give that person every chance, but if you know it’s not going to go anywhere then move on. It’s too hard. Life is too short.”
She also says her other tip would be to never say no. It’s why she is still smiling and what drives her desire to design.
“The brand will live on forever. It has incredible value – it’s highly valued by customers,” she says. Describing the label as like another baby Zampatti notes: “I feel very proud. It’s like having a really lovely child…[It’s] Something to be proud of. I’m still open to whatever comes my way. I can’t say no, it keeps me flat out!”
Yet despite all the accolades, Zampatti says at the heart of her success is that she simply loves what she does.
“I didn’t plan for success. All I wanted to do was design beautiful clothes. I love that when a woman puts on one of my dresses they feel beautiful. That has been my vocation. The fact it took me into so many different areas — it has been like an enchanted road. I put it down to the fact I have a very open mind. I’m very curious. And when somebody offers me something I say yes. I can’t say no.
“Give it a try. If you do fail — imagine what you have learned by that experience. I learned to appreciate failure in my really early days.
It’s better to say yes and fail than say no and never experience.”
She doesn’t have any regrets (“they are all a part of who you are, they’ve all added value in some way or another”) and she shrugs she can’t think of any drawbacks to having it all.
“Even though you’re perpetually tired, you sleep better anyway! I have a belief you’re given certain abilities in life and I think it’s a waste not to utilise them. Maximise them.”
Which explains how she handles being a grandmother. An exquisitely dressed one, no doubt, certainly not on burping duty.
“I’m a hopeless grandmother!” she smiles with brutal honesty. “I explained to my daughters I have never looked after babies ever. Because I had a nanny from the beginning for all my children, looking after babies is not something that I’ve learned!”
FAST 5 WITH CARLA ZAMPATTI
Favourite App: Favourite what? I’m not particularly savvy! Actually I do have an app. SBS News! Instead of reading papers, now I look at that.
Dancer or Singer: Terrible at both!
Book Worm or Film Buff: I love film but I also love wonderful books; I like both.
Favourite Indulgence: I probably have too many to tell. I’m not a pamperer. Travel probably. Travel is what I love doing. I love travelling. I go to Europe every year in June/ July. I go to Milano but I like Tuscany best, I spend most of my time there. I love going to Venice for the biennale. It’s ever inspiring; it’s the wonder of the world. It’s absolutely magical. The weather’s divine, the food is beautiful, the people are so nice and hard working and struggling at the moment.
Early Bird or Night Owl: I’m an early bird. I wish I were a night owl but I’m not. I’m surrounded by night owls, in my industry. I don’t think it matters – I swim: that’s my exercise for the day. Because it’s the most efficient one I’ve found – I can do it in 15 minutes! I swim in my pool every morning for about nine months of the year.
Watch the finale of Carla Zampatti’s Spring/Summer 15/16 show ahead of Australian Fashion Week show below:
Image Credit: Zimbio Australia