Bianca Spender on Losing Carla Zampatti and Living With Grief: PART 2

Continuing from part one, Marie Claire editor Georgie McCourt talks to designer Bianca Spender about how she protects her creative energy while running an 18-year-old Australian luxury label: splitting her days into “creative time” and “business time,” and why her most productive hours are between 5pm and 2am, once the emails stop.

Bianca describes the Bianca Spender aesthetic in her own words: clothes built around freedom and movement, designed to make women feel completely themselves, or better yet, want to dance. She also shares why she kept two skin cancer diagnoses private for years, and why launching her first swimwear collection and sun care campaign felt like the right moment to speak about it publicly, including how two separate conversations with friends led her to catch both cancers early.

In the second half of this episode, Bianca reflects on some of the most defining moments of her life: the sudden and very public loss of her mother, and the loss of her father eighteen months later. She talks about the advice on grief that has stayed with her since: “it never leaves, it just visits less frequently,” and how grief reshaped her sense of courage and self-forgiveness. She closes with how she protects her time through boundaries with technology, her “swimming epiphanies,” and a final message for anyone listening: trust yourself.

This episode covers:

• Protecting her creative energy by separating “creative days” from “business days”

• Why her most creative hours are 5pm to 2am, once the world switches off

• The Bianca Spender aesthetic: designing clothes meant to free the body and “make you dance”

• Going public with two skin cancer diagnoses after years of privacy

• Launching her first swimwear collection and sun care campaign

• Navigating the sudden, very public loss of her mother

• Living with grief as an ongoing companion: “it never leaves, it just visits less frequently”

• Finding courage and self-forgiveness in the wake of loss

• Protecting her time with boundaries around technology

• Her “swimming epiphanies” and other ways she switches off

• A closing message to trust yourself

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Credits:

Host Georgie McCourt

Edited by Helen Smith

Head of Vodcasting Rachel Fountain

With thanks to our amazing team at Marie Claire

You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

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