Hints of danger lurk beneath the controlled cut of Christopher Esber’s dresses as they careen along the female form. Cut-outs carved through technical fabrics, interwoven strips and vertiginous slits threaten to shock as they awe.
This considered tease has kept Esber’s local fans gripping their front-row seats since his first Australian Fashion Week solo show in 2010. This afternoon Esber is ready to provoke an exclusive audience at Paris Fashion Week, with his first show on the official schedule.
Christopher Esber and model Anna in Paris before his runway debut in the fashion capital.Credit: Antoine Doyen
“I wanted to come and do my thing like I’ve been doing it, but in a heightened way,” Esber, 36, says from the back of a taxi, rushing from venue inspections to model bookings. “It’s reiterating what the brand is and what we’re known for. This is the billboard moment.”
Since graduating alongside Dion Lee from Sydney’s Fashion Design School at TAFE in 2008 and staging a joint presentation with Kym Ellery at New York Fashion Week in 2012, Esber has been the tortoise while his peers raced towards fashion fame.
Lee and his dark, club kid couture are enmeshed on the New York calendar, while Ellery showed at Paris Fashion Week in 2013, before closing her Australian business in 2019 with debts of $2.6 million.
Australian supermodel Gemma Ward wearing a Christopher Esber dress from his pre-fall 2023 collection.
In that time, Esber has patiently grown his Australian production team to 35 people, while fine-tuning an intelligent and sexy aesthetic which has had the stylists of Dua Lipa, Kendall Jenner and Priyanka Chopra Jonas keeping couriers busy.
“The world has responded to dressing with the beach culture in mind and that definitely influences my work,” Esber says. “Living in Sydney it is a part of who I am and that speaks to the yearning for escape customers have wanted since COVID.”
“That connection to nature has always been important in the collection. I’ve been putting more concept into the clothes and the collection we are showing is the manifestation of that.”
Nature will be present on the runway with Esber using a leaf leather, which has already found its way into Jonathan Anderson’s collections for Loewe.
“It’s essentially leaves from the Amazon that have been stitched together and treated, so it looks like a painted leather, but it’s actually a bio material. ”
“We’re also working with hoops and wire in armholes and hip points to accentuate certain areas of the body. That’s the new element of exploration throughout the collection.”
Esber’s shift in emphasis from fabric to structure is reinforced by the monumental City of Architecture in the Trocadero, the venue for the 200-seat show.
“It’s got this underground feel where I could create this feeling of enclosure and cocooning,” he says. “The collection is inspired by the idea of the first woman – a cave woman. There’s a nod to the first thought of getting dressed.”
The marriage of venue and collection has been hastily arranged, with the Paris adventure only confirmed last month. Receiving approval to show in the fashion capital can be a lengthy process, with Ellery, Romance Was Born, Colette Dinnigan, Toni Maticevski and most recently Zimmermann among the few Australian labels to have made the journey.
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“It’s a fabulous surprise,” Esber says. “I’ve been coming to Paris each season for eight years to show it to buyers. I already feel like part of the environment but it’s different to be showing as part of the schedule.”
“Showing in Paris seems like a natural progression. The business is really growing in Europe.”
Having bided his time, this is not a make or break moment for Esber’s business, with his label stocked in more than 150 stores globally and 40 per cent of sales in Europe.
“It’s a great moment for the brand to flex what it can do,” he says, with only the slightest tremble in a voice husky from delivering last-minute instructions.
“Having no voice helps. It’s harder to hear the nerves inside.”
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