Carla Zampatti’s children sit down to talk about losing their mother and how they are honouring her legacy as her iconic fashion brand, Carla Zampatti, celebrates its 60th birthday.
A huge portrait of Carla Zampatti is on the wall behind a grand piano. Painted by Swedish-Australian artist Danelle Bergstrom in 2009, it is almost lifesize, highlighting Carla’s unflappable gaze and impeccable style. She is also pictured from the back, full-length, almost as if reflected in a mirror.
Carla’s three children, Alex Schuman, Allegra Spender and Bianca Spender, pose by a piano for The Weekly’s photographer. And the subtext of the set-up isn’t lost on Bianca. Carla’s presence continues to loom large in all of their lives. “It’s not a subconscious presence right now,” she says with a laugh. “It’s a very physical presence.”
“It’s got a good sense of her, actually,” says Allegra of the painting. She adds that Bianca had a more precarious relationship with the canvas when she worked with their mother. Carla had the portrait hanging behind her office desk, in the same building we are in now in Sydney’s CBD.
“I was like, ‘Mum, can you not sit below yourself in full life size? I don’t need three of you— the back of you, the front of you, and then you,’” adds Bianca. Although she concedes, “I actually think of all the paintings that have been done, it’s definitely the most talented and captures her the best.”
April marks four years since Carla’s unexpected passing, a week after a tragic fall at the opera on Sydney Harbour. The revered and beloved fashion designer, businesswoman and philanthropist was 82 — although that depends on who you speak to.
“We never knew her age [growing up], we were just never told. It was like past 40 — we’re not counting,” says Bianca.
This year marks 60 years of the Carla Zampatti brand. A milestone that, while phenomenal for a business, Bianca says would have made her “furious — because that would make her really old and would definitely not be appealing to her”.
As a designer, Carla Zampatti was a household name. The name was synonymous with chic, a vision in marabou coats, sunglasses and elegant black-and-white tailoring. An aspirational role model to women across the country who proved you could build a successful business from scratch.
As a mother, she was funny, opinionated, but never precious. The family home in Sydney’s Woollahra might have been filled with beautiful things, but it was also lived in. Bianca notes that a huge and expensive couch was usually used as a racetrack and cubby house by various grandchildren. And the scratches on the piano were from moving around a vase were just par for the course.
Her children recall with amusement Carla’s love of a bargain at the supermarket, and her personal velocity. And that of her driving, which once left then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull vowing never to get into her passenger seat again.
The three siblings are a tight-knit bunch, something that Bianca says is the result of having two working parents growing up. Something that was unusual in that time. Carla’s second husband, and the girls’ father, John Spender, was a barrister turned Liberal politician in the 1980s. He later became the Australian ambassador to France.
“I think having very busy parents does actually help your children because they have to rely on each other,” says Bianca. “So we were very close, and we all had our different roles that we played. I would always iron Allegra’s uniform, and Allegra was always the advice giver, even though she’s younger than me.”
That strong bond helped them through difficult times, like the week Carla spent in hospital after the accident. However, even more so at the very public overflowing of emotion and attention after their mother’s death. Furthermore, there was the state funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
It was a fitting tribute to a woman who achieved so much during her lifetime. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987, elevated to Companion in 2009, and appointed by the Italian government Commander in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2004.
“The three of us were very united in that week that she was in the hospital, and we weren’t sure what was going to happen,” says Allegra. “None of that was straightforward.”
“It was really tough on the family,” adds Alex. “The state funeral was something that was incredibly challenging because you really have to put aside your own grief for that. It’s such a public thing. It took us a long time after that to sort of regroup and recover.”
Despite the difficulty of this time, the children found a lot of strength from the many stories that were shared by people who had either met their mother or worn her clothes for special moments in their lives.
“So many people knew mum,” says Allegra. “And so people would come and tell me their stories, which was beautiful.”
It wasn’t only the family that they had to hold together. The siblings also had the Carla Zampatti business to keep on track, led by Alex, who has been the company’s CEO since 2019. They couldn’t have anticipated the “stampede”, as he calls it, of customers buying up her sophisticated tailoring and eveningwear designs in the weeks immediately after her death.
“It was an extraordinary display of support,” he says. “But it was also challenging for the team, because many of them were dealing with their own grief while they’re being inundated with customers buying everything off the shelves.”
Carla Zampatti remains a family business in every sense of the word. Alex, Bianca and Allegra literally grew up in the business. Since primary school, holidays were spent working in the company rather than heading to the beach or travelling like their friends. It gave them all an appreciation of how much work it takes to build a successful career. Bianca recalls as a 10- or 11-year-old being tasked with picking up the cash takings from the three city outlets to take to the bank. Plus, days on end spent filing daily takings sheets.
But after those years of menial tasks, they have all held senior positions in the company, at various points. Before Alex was CEO, Allegra was managing director of the company for eight years from 2008. And after working for French designer Martine Sitbon in Paris, Bianca worked on Carla’s designs for five years before starting up her own Bianca Spender label in 2008.
Both Alex and Allegra concede that Bianca was the one who inherited the style gene from their mother. However, Bianca says her style is diametrically opposite to that of her mother.
Not only is the company owned by the family, but many of the team members have family connections. “There are so many multi-generational members of the team,” says Alex. “So, mother, daughter, granddaughter, all working for the company at various stages.”
“And mum was a very personal boss,” adds Allegra.
With the 60th anniversary of the brand this year, there are corks to be popped, but also challenges to be faced.
“We’re trying to be the first eponymous second-generation fashion brand in Australia,” says Alex. “It’s done frequently overseas, but there is a sense in which this hasn’t been done before here. And so that’s something we’re really proud of.”
The celebrations will include a special show at Australian Fashion Week in May 2025. A runway is being named in her memory. Just as Carla was considered the “godmother of Australian fashion” by the industry at large, Alex says that the festivities will also be “a celebration of the fashion industry, because Mum was really passionate about the whole industry”.
“There are so many designers, models, and photographers who got their first big break in Mum’s business. And so we really want to recognise and celebrate her altruism.”
While there were talks of succession plans while Carla was alive, “she was such a force and amazing forces are quite hard to replace”, says Bianca. “But also it’s quite hard to start successions while [the founder is] there. And she was the creator right to the end, and [then we had] to shift into that gear without a pause, because fashion doesn’t have a pause.”
Designer Karlie Ungar was soon brought in as creative director for three years.. And in June 2024, a former member of the design team, Tanya Emon Beattie, returned and took over as fashion director.
Another new-ish tack for the brand is to sell internationally. Carla had opened stores in the US in the 1980s, something Alex calls “outlandishly ambitious”, unheard of for an Australian designer at the time.
They were short-lived, and since then, the focus has always been on the Australian customer. But since last year, the brand has now been stocked with three retailers overseas, including Moda Operandi, and the aim is for a slow-and-steady approach to growing this side of the business.
Another challenge for the business today is that Carla had already tried so much during her career — some products and collaborations included sunglasses, eyewear, perfumes, swimwear, the famous 1985 Ford Laser and even a Hoover vacuum cleaner.
“She was never afraid to try new things,” says Alex. “That’s the trouble coming in the second generation behind her. It’s very difficult to break new ground.”
It was Carla’s groundbreaking approach to all aspects of life and business that made her such an integral part of Australian women’s lives, as well as a role model for them.
As a business owner, she empowered other women to believe they could do the same.
As a board member for multiple companies and organisations—and the first female chair of SBS for a decade from 1999 — she was an example to women that they should be in the boardroom, and she promoted agendas that would further women’s equality. And while she dressed them for their entire working lives, she was also there for their personal occasions, from graduations to weddings.
Carla also achieved her phenomenal success as a self-made immigrant who arrived in Australia from Italy as a small girl in 1950, without a word of English. She left school at 14 and found her own way into a career that she loved and built a business from scratch.
Encouraged by her first husband, Leo Schuman, Alex’s father, she launched her business in 1965. He also invested in the enterprise. In their divorce a few years later, she lost it all — except her name. She relaunched in 1970 with a $5000 loan from her cousin, who lent her the money on the proviso that she run the business single-handedly.
“She started this at a time which wasn’t very friendly for women starting their own business,” says Alex. “And it wasn’t friendly for divorced women with a newborn baby. And yet she did it all by herself.”
He notes that this year has many other anniversaries to celebrate.
“She was one of the women who started Chief Executive Women, which turns 40 this year. And she was integral to the start-up of Australian Fashion Week, which is facing its 30th year this year. They’re all coming together with a big bow.”
The various strands of Carla’s life are also woven through the philanthropic work that she began, and which is now continued by her children, supporting multicultural endeavours, women in business and her other great passion, the arts.
The Carla Zampatti Foundation works with organisations including the Sydney Dance Company, Voices of Women, Australian Fashion Council and the Wayside Chapel. Then there are awards and scholarships in her name, including the Australian Fashion Laureate’s Carla Zampatti Award for Excellence in Leadership, the Australian Multicultural Foundation’s Carla Zampatti Scholarship for Young Women, and the NSW Premier’s Multiculturalism Awards has the Carla Zampatti Medal for Arts & Culture.
“Mum empowered women by making them feel great,” says Allegra. “Because when she felt great, she took on the world, and she wanted all women to take on the world.”
Alex jokes that Allegra is now “the embodiment of women’s empowerment” as the independent federal Member for Wentworth, a position she was elected to in 2022, a year after her mother’s passing. While it was not something she had considered while Carla was alive, and had never discussed with her, Carla’s life lessons have proven invaluable in the role.
“Mum was very courageous,” she says. “And thinking about her courage actually helps me in my job. You couldn’t bully Mum—and it’s a good thing in life not to be able to be bullied. It would have been really interesting running [for office] with Mum. It would have been wonderful. She would have been really proud, as a mother and as a woman. But I think she would have had a lot of views,” she finishes with a laugh.
In parliament, it isn’t lost on her that she is surrounded by Carla Zampatti designs on fellow female politicians who have always gravitated towards the brand for its polish and practicality.
Certainly, Allegra’s political mindset has been informed by her mother’s achievements.
“She was a woman without money, without connections, without background, who was really successful,” says Allegra. “And my lesson from her life is that we should continue to be a country in which you can be successful wherever you come from.”
Keeping Carla’s memory alive for the next generation of the Zampatti family is also easier given the siblings’ bond. Between her three children, Carla had nine grandchildren, aged from 24 to eight, who still miss their “nonna”.
“The next generations are also quite close,” says Bianca. “They’re all in Sydney, so we’re very lucky that we can keep them all together. And they all do a stint of work at Mum’s. There is always a barcode to be stuck on, a box to be unpacked, or shoulder pads to be counted.”
While Alex’s four children are the oldest, and therefore had the longest time with Carla, Allegra’s youngest ones still have lovely memories.
“They remember she had a sweet jar,” says Allegra. “On a Sunday afternoon, she would feed them croissants and Nutella and try and feed us champagne. They loved her sense of style — all three of mine still feel that, and my middle one often gets a piece of fabric from Bianca’s office, and she’s very good at draping.”
The month of May was known as the “festival of Mum” according to Allegra, as her birthday fell on the 19th, the week after Mothers’ Day. And while the birthday was always the main event, you couldn’t forget Mothers’ Day, according to Bianca: “You had to acknowledge it in some way, you weren’t off the hook. I mean, she was an Italian mother, and the Italians keep their children close.”
Bianca recalls that her mother’s Italian nature hadn’t fully registered until she went to the country to intern with a patternmaker in her twenties. “I rang up Allegra and Alex, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, Mum makes sense! There’s a whole country like her!’ So that was why it was so important to me to take the kids there.”
Both Bianca and Allegra separately took their children to Italy in the past year to connect with that heritage. Walking the streets of Carla’s hometown, Lovero, Bianca asked her two boys if they could see signs of their nonna around them, “And they’re like, ‘Sequins, fur, silver, fast cars…’”
These last few years, the three families have had plenty of stories to remember. They have continued the festival of Carla in May. They get everyone together in a country house for a weekend away.
Schedules are proving difficult this year, with fashion week shows and a federal election looming.
No matter where the siblings find themselves, “I’ll have a glass of champagne for mum on Mothers’ Day and think about her,” says Allegra.
“We all have a deep sense of Mum,” adds Bianca. “And that has been a huge gift. She’s somehow still there in the room — but hopefully not in a painting on the wall.”
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
