Taylors Hill fashion designer Zsaneta with her model daughter Julia, who is wearing one of her mother’s creations. 73256 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
By Alesha Capone
TAYLORS Hill resident Zsaneta said she never had designs on a fashion career – she just loved sewing and creating dresses.
But nowadays the designer and stylist has a thriving business called Zsaneta Couture, creating one-off bridal gowns, wedding outfits, evening dresses and racewear.
In addition, she hosts a show on Foxtel, mentors young fashion designers at Kangan Batman TAFE and RMIT University and supplies clothes for charity catwalk parades.
Growing up in Williamstown and Altona, Zsaneta said she made aprons for her dolls, sewed her own outfits and took dressmaking classes on Saturdays.
The talented Brimbank resident said for years she viewed her creativity as a “passionate hobby” and did not have the confidence to consider becoming a professional designer.
“My friends would say, ‘Where do your clothes come from?’ and I would say, ‘Chapel Street’,” she said.
“I kept it to myself for years and years and years, until my sister-in-law came along and asked me to design her bridesmaids’ dresses. Then, she said, ‘Why don’t you do something with it?’”
Zsaneta began working from her Taylors Hill home, and her children Julia and Dean became accustomed to seeing eight bridesmaids, in need of a fitting, inside the house at once.
But after becoming inundated with work, Zsaneta set up shop in Moonee Ponds, where she now has three employees, five apprentices and two interns.
“I’m very, very organised. I many not look as if I’m organised, but I am,” she said.
“You walk into the shop, and I have fabric everywhere , but I guess that’s a typical designer’s studio.”
Zsaneta also puts out a magazine every time she hosts a catwalk show and hosts a fashion talk show on Foxtel’s Fashion TV Oceania channel.
“What I enjoy is the flair, the lifestyle, the people I meet,” Zsaneta said.
Her daughter Julia, 19, often models for Zsaneta Couture fashion shows and asks her mother to design dresses for her nights out.
“It’s easy, I just look at the fabric and I can whip something up overnight,” Zsaneta said.
For more information, see www.zsaneta.com
