[ad_1]
With the sudden death of Carla Zampatti, Australia may have lost its most popular and beloved fashion designer. Zampatti was that rare beast who had intergenerational relevance. She celebrated 55 years in business before the Covid lockdown, in early 2020. She had not retired when she died at 78.
The outpouring of condolences on social media since her death (due to injuries sustained in a fall at the opera house) indicates the high regard in which she was held nationally. The comments fall into two groups: a popular designer who made clothes that women wanted to wear; and a woman who supported the next generation as well as those who worked for her.
Zampatti arrived as a migrant from northern Italy in Fremantle in 1950. She was proud of her immigrant status. She has spoken often about the contribution Italians make to Australian life: their food, their culture, their business and their hard work. She believed Australia had strong remnants of Italy.
She also spoke about the opportunity that Australia presented to someone like her interested in designing fashion clothes. The Australian fashion markets and also our broader cultural outlook was transforming in this immediate post-war period when it arrived.
Australian post-war fashion
Vogue magazine launched its first Australian supplement in 1959. The country was becoming more and more outward looking, laid back and focused on fast fashion.
Household spending on clothes, shoes, and draperies increased dramatically, tripling from 1946–197 to 1959–60. Social change was also underway: the number of married women working increased to 38.3% in 1961. It can be assumed that fewer of them had time to make their own clothes, which created opportunities for ready-to-wear lines that could also keep pace. with the very rapid change of mode after the war.
By 1968, with a higher participation of women in the labor force (about 39%), home sewing was in decline and local manufacturing protected by high tariffs was in full swing. Many post-war manufacturers were migrants, including the large European Jewish population, which accelerated the introduction of casual sportswear, sportswear for men and women, finer knitted clothing and materials. shiny synthetics.
All this reduced the work of women required to maintain the clothes and make them look good. Mix and match, flexible and looser clothing lent itself better to product standardization than old-fashioned fitted clothing such as suits. The industry favored those with knowledge of fashion and style, as well as skilled owner-managers who understood both craft skills and production.
Birth of a fashion icon
Zampatti had these skills. She benefited and contributed to this cultural and structural change in Australian fashion – and then took it to the next level.
She opened her first wholesale business in Sydney in 1965. Her 1960s work shows a bold graphic touch, with a nod to bohemian, but smarter. Zampatti began displaying her clothes in the window of her Surry Hills studio, bypassing the wholesale and retail division. She opened her first store in 1972, at a time when manufacturers were unlikely to be retailers as well. Eventually she had around 30 stores and later exclusive deals with department store David Jones.
Zampatti has been very successful. In 1980, she was named Business Woman of the Year, and she went beyond fashion to industrial design, designing the Ford Laser car for women in 1985.
Zampatti’s call and legacy
Why were her clothes so successful?
Zampatti has designed extremely easy to wear clothes for working women. In the 1980s, they had metal zippers instead of hard openings and invisible zippers in pants to keep a good line. She then designed practical jumpsuits that could be dressed up with a jacket. She has also designed glamorous evening wear for weddings, red carpets and special occasions. She was aware of the process of maturity: “When you are young you suffer and you try to please everyone. Now I don’t ”.
Zampatti has always emphasized that fashion is first and foremost a business, not an artistic practice, although the business would not be successful if aesthetics were overlooked. Local production was important to her and her lines continued to be made in Australia. She was cosmopolitan, sophisticated and outward looking. She was a woman of the world but also believed that Australians did not need to be expatriates in the age of jets and had a lot to bring home.
To this end, she funded a scholarship to Sydney University of Technology. The most talented Fashion and Textiles graduate students with a strong business acumen could study for a masters degree in London, Milan or New York, in the hopes of returning to Australia and sharing their new horizon of experience in developing business. a successful line.
In an SBS interview with Janice Peterson (who often wore her clothes for television), she highlighted the impact of Italian art and church frescoes on her as a child. Indeed, you can see the light and strong colors of Renaissance and Mannerist art translated into crisp and looking Australian women.
Zampatti was a modernist. Couture for women was paramount in her day wear, and women’s bodies were not obscured by elaborate patterns or trims. Women ranging from former Governor General Dame Quentin Bryce to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Jenny Morrison, Anna Bligh, Julie Bishop, Ita Buttrose, Susan Renouf, Princess Mary, Nigella Lawson and countless presenters of news, reporters as well as stars wore her clothes.
The clothes made them striking, but they wore the clothes and not the clothes.
Zampatti was a skilled businesswoman, pioneering board member (SBS first woman chair, Westfield Group board member; Art Gallery of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, among others) and cultural benefactor (Sydney Dance Company and other cultural and performance activities. groups).
She was above all a proud and feminist fashion designer, promoting economic independence and women’s action. What she had accomplished from the 1960s was remarkable.
Australia is the poorest without Zampatti and his pioneering fashion ethic.
-
Peter McNeil is a distinguished professor of design history at the Sydney University of Technology
-
This article first appeared on The Conversation
Source link
