Carla Zampatti and I are having lunch, or at least what passes for it these days. Only she’s relaxing on the sofa in the library of her home, a 1920s Italianate oasis in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, while I am perched at the dining table in my Melbourne apartment.Sunday Life
She adds that the government is “handling [the crisis] beautifully”, and that as a country, we owe a great debt to our healthcare workers. “It was possibly the most rewarding thing I did. I was at the right age and I found an inner strength I didn’t realise I had,” she says. If Carla Zampatti is an outsider, her career at the centre of Australia’s fashion industry has been anything but. Her accolades include a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2009 and the Australian Fashion Laureate in 2008. She has starred at the country’s major fashion weeks alongside designers one-third her age. And in 2018, she launched an annual scholarship to help graduates from UTS in Sydney further their studies at some of the world’s top fashion schools.
But she gets just as much of a boost from the emails she regularly receives from everyday women, aged 17 to 80, who thank her for the outfit that gave them that extra boost to get that job, or to stand out at their event. “Mum’s very flexible and doesn’t mind change, in both how she designs and the way she sees the world. In my job, I don’t mind change at all – we’re not perfectionists.”
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