By Amanda Hooton

Copyright brisbanetimes

The road to Paris

There may be a question in life to which the ultimate answer is not “Paris”, but it’s hard to think of one. Esber, certainly, always dreamt of taking his collections there. In typically sensible style, however, he took things slowly, gradually building his brand recognition, his expertise, his confidence in this country first. In 2012 he won the Australian L’Oréal National Designer Award; in 2013 the Australian regional final of the International Woolmark Prize; in 2015 Italian Vogue’s Most Talented Designer Award for Australia-Pacific (thank you, Merrylands newsagent).

He actually began showing in Paris a decade ago. Not on the official catwalks of Fashion Week, but as part of the enormous brand-to-buyer business being done behind the scenes, beyond the famous venues of the 1st Arrondissement. It’s a well-established system, and Esber was successful at it, but it wasn’t easy. “In those early years, where you put your heart and soul into things and they might not necessarily be received well, there were definitely disheartening moments,” he recalls. “And you’re like, ‘Oh.’ Then you have to pick yourself up and do it all over again. It’s hard to get that breakthrough.”

Then, in 2019, he did a collection, Resort 2020. He pauses, thinking back. It had been hard in the lead-up, he says. He’d been in business for a decade, “the economy was trending down, and everyone was talking doom and gloom. I remember thinking, ‘Is this going to be it for me?’ ” He pauses again. “And I do have this thing – I don’t know if it’s self-sabotage or I don’t like people telling me what to do – but I was like, ‘OK, well then let’s, let’s just go out with a bang.’ ”

At this moment, I think of Hamer, and her comment about Esber having “balls”. In the face of potential doom, Esber produced a collection that was freer and sexier than any of his previous work. He followed this with a huge photo shoot, “the biggest we’d ever done”. Then he and his tiny team took the collection and set off for Paris.

‘It all just started. You could feel the buzz. We knew something exciting was happening.’Christopher Esber

“We only had four people in the business at the time,” he says now, “so we all had about three jobs: we were really bootstrapping it. It was really just a bunch of friends making clothes and trying to get deliveries out.” He looks bemused at the memory. “And as soon as we arrived, we started picking up [orders from] really great department stores in London and in the US. And then within one day, we got a request from [the singer-songwriter sister of Beyoncé] Solange Knowles, needing a look sent for a red-carpet event. So I had sent it out, and then I get another DM from [model and actor] Emily Ratajkowski’s stylist, who’s on the other side of Paris, saying, ‘I need this look within 45 minutes.’ I had no time to send it, so it was literally me on one of those Paris rental bikes, pedalling, pedalling, rushing this look across the city.”

He smiles, thinking back. “And literally, it was like this crescendo. Within the space of a week, Emily wore it; Solange wore it. And then Law Roach, who styles Zendaya (whose 180 million Insta followers put Emily’s 29 million to shame) was like, ‘I need to have this look for Zendaya.’ And I’m like, ‘Of course, of course.’ So I sent it off and she wore it too, on the red carpet.” He leans forward. “And it all just started. You could feel the buzz. We knew something exciting was happening: the buyers seeing this press, seeing the collection; it was like this frenzy.” Esber, you will not be surprised to learn, looks utterly unfrenzied. “It was the right look for the right moment, and it just took off.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Sales rocketed all over the world, but especially in Europe, where more than 40 per cent of his stockists are now based. Tiffany Hsu is chief buying officer at Munich-based online luxury fashion retailer Mytheresa. She first bought Esber’s collection in 2019, when his “minimal yet ultra-sexy aesthetic really caught our eye”. The company, which delivers to 130 countries worldwide, has stocked him ever since. “[And] we consistently see double-digit growth [in his sales] season after season.”

“It’s just amazing what Christopher has accomplished,” says Jaana Quaintance-James, CEO of the Australian Fashion Council. “And he’s done it alone.” She describes the recently announced NSW Fashion Strategy as an acknowledgement of the need to support Australian designers better, via a network of grants, manufacturing and market access. “Imagine what brands like Christopher Esber could have achieved if they’d had some support!”

Actually, Esber already appears to have achieved everything possible. In 2023, he won designer of the year in the Australian Fashion Laureate awards. The same year, he was invited by Paris Fashion Week’s governing body (the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode) to show “on schedule” in Paris: an experience he describes as the very “definition of terror”, but which covered him in glory. And last year, he won the ANDAM with a collection that, Nathalie Dufour puts it: “radiated confidence and strength”. He was transformed from a long-term quiet achiever to an overnight success; an understated keeper of the faith to the hottest thing in town.

And yet he also stayed exactly the same. His momentary appearance at the end of his third catwalk show in Paris this past June was as brief as ever; his wave to the crowd as self-deprecating, his black shirt as understated. True, his show had just included a top whose hand-beading took artisans 700 hours to complete in a Parisian atelier, rather than being embroidered by his mum in front of the telly; but this was a change in degree, not in kind. So what happens from here?

“I could totally see him being a very low-key head of some great [haute couture] house,” says Ilona Hamer. This would certainly be a fairy-tale end to the story – the Australian from Merrylands in charge of Chanel, or Dior, or Balenciaga. Esber laughs. “It’s just so romantic, right?” he agrees. But he also still wants what he’s always wanted. To simply grow his own business; go on creating his own world. Fragrance might be a new avenue to explore, perhaps? Leather goods? Homewares? “I kind of want to see how far this universe can be stretched.”

Amid all the possibilities, there is one piece of definite news. After almost 20 years in fashion without a single garment he himself can actually wear, Christopher Esber has finally decided to design some “good jeans, good shirts, good trousers” for men. “I do struggle to find pieces I like,” he confesses. “So it might also, selfishly, be a little bit about a wardrobe for myself.”

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