A lot has changed for women in the last thirty years - and for the better. But while we’re busy smashing glass ceilings, tackling institutionalised gender disparity and making change with the #metoo movement, sadly, when it comes to the statistics for ovarian cancer, very little has changed in that time.

“In Australia, three women die from ovarian cancer every day. This is shocking.” For Camilla Freeman Topper, one half of the brother-sister Australian fashion institution that is camilla and marc, the statistics hit home. It was nearly thirty years ago that she lost her mother to ovarian cancer, when Camilla was just a child. “The rates of survival are among the lowest of any disease”, she tells us. “Around 1,500 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and over 1,000 women will die from the disease. So, on average, one woman every eight hours dies from ovarian cancer. The overall five-year survival rate is only 46%, and drops to just 17% if the cancer is stage four at detection. This is staggering. Globally, it's estimated that around 300,000 women are diagnosed, and 185,000 women will die from ovarian cancer each year.”

It’s these sobering statistics that have brought Camilla and Marc to launch the ‘Ovaries, Talk About Them’ campaign, with the goal to make some real change. This is not just lip service: “our mission is undoubtedly to end ovarian cancer”, Camilla tells us. “The statistics associated with the disease are completely devastating and I think unnecessarily. If the early detection test could be developed and available to women through their local GP, ovarian cancer can be diagnosed early, and the statistics completely overturned. This is what we're working towards with associate professor Caroline Ford at the UNSW Ovarian Cancer Research Group.”

We spoke to this incredible woman about launching her own fashion empire, the three qualities an entrepreneur needs to have, and how her own motherhood journey has changed the way she works. Most importantly, we talk about how and why she decided to speak up about ovarian cancer, and how her mother’s legacy inspires her…

Her childhood memories

“We were testing children, and testing teenagers”, Camilla says of herself and brother Marc. “I think that probably counts for a lot in adult life, but I've always had an obsession with creating. It's like the way you can imagine something in your mind and see it come to life right before your eyes. I always knew I wanted to create a fashion house that had a wide offering. But I also really wanted to make women feel beautiful and solve their wardrobe problems.” 

The three traits every entrepreneur needs

I don't think I ever coined the term entrepreneur, but I'm super grateful that my brother and I have been able to carve this path for us. I think every entrepreneur needs a large amount of grit. You're going to be knocked back and fail many times before you succeed. But if you can learn from those experiences, it's only going to make you wiser. I think enduring optimism is really important, and I think the ability to understand the environment you are in would probably be my three picks.

How COVID changed camilla and marc

“Building a global business comes with a plethora of challenges and constant changes. However, online and digital over the last decade have become huge areas of focus and growth, and the challenges along the way have been many. Of course, there’s COVID, with its devastating effects and unique opportunities it has created. For online and social media, it's changed our lives on so many levels: the way we communicate, where our focus is, the way we connect. But for our brand, it was an incredibly positive shift in the way we were able to communicate with our community. I guess it's taken our conversations out of the in-store experience with this tool, and we've been able to build a global network of like-minded partners and advocates.

When Covid first hit, we thought that the whole industry would be destroyed. But once we called a crisis meeting with our management team and explored all of our unique opportunities that we had coming, and the potential reality with what was about to hit us, we actually really embraced it. It kind of felt like a new sense of global community, more meaningful moments, lots of connections with loved ones and family, far more centered, more focused. I think we were also really lucky enough to have been planning the launch of a new category, which is active wear. It was launched in March last year just as Covid hit, so certainly serendipitous timing for us.

Being a woman and trusting her gut

Being a woman in the fashion industry in a woman's body has been one of the most important things I've learned along the way. Honestly, I didn't realize it till well into my career how much I should trust my gut instinct and the way I feel in my clothing. Knowing what women want before they realise they even need it, and never wanting to fail them, has been my life goal. I think my gut is my greatest weapon, and I'll never underestimate it. I also think that being a woman is incredibly complex. We wear so many hats, and with our different roles as boss, mother, wife, daughter, friend, we're really good at multitasking. I think this complexity makes me a better leader and creative director. I was significantly less organised and less efficient pre-motherhood.

How sisterhood defines her career

I feel like my career is defined by sisterhood. I've always felt my greatest achievement is creating clothing that empowers women, enables them to live their best lives. It was only recently that this mission took a whole new meaning for us when we launched the Ovaries, Talk About Them campaign last year. My mother, as you know, died of ovarian cancer when I was 11, and this campaign is our ongoing mission to end ovarian cancer. 

On losing her mother at age 11

It was horrible. Profoundly heartbreaking, every time I relive that time. I don't know how I picked myself up and got on with things in hindsight, but I think children are really resilient. My father worked tirelessly to try and make up the void for her loss, but to be really honest, I think the hardest part is being an adult and becoming a mother and watching my girls pass the age that I was when I lost my mum, and realising all the things that she missed out on, like all the milestones, the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. There's a lot of them. That's been probably the hardest thing to digest.

On her mother’s legacy

She was gentle, smart, kind, loving, calm, very present. She was also a really good listener. I think she loved being a mother. I think she took the role really seriously, but she was really strict and wanted to impart good values and morals on us, never allowing us to take anything for granted, and always taught us great empathy. She was also an incredible homemaker, wonderful and talented cook, who I think loved to care and nurture us. She was probably the bravest person I've ever met.

How she decided to start the conversation about ovarian cancer

It is a very vulnerable conversation, and it did take us a really long time. Marc and I, we always talked about doing something in this space for years and years, but really were never ready or felt comfortable enough. As my daughters started to approach the age that I was when she was diagnosed, we both knew at that moment the time was now to start researching and seeing which areas we could make the biggest impact and talk more publicly about it. It really felt like it was our duty and responsibility, as her legacy, to create lasting change. During the campaign launch last year, we received hundreds and hundreds of private Instagram messages, emails, texts, you name it, of solidarity, and lots of shared experiences. It became so clear that the purpose of the campaign was to use our platform to amplify the voices of women and their families directly affected by the disease.

Why early detection is almost impossible

This is the biggest problem with this disease, and that's why they call it the silent killer. You have to rely on a woman noticing the symptoms, which we all feel on a daily basis, monthly basis - including bloating, change of bowel habits, pain. This is why there is also so much exponential shame that occurs when a woman doesn't pick it up early, because it's like she didn't know her own body or was too ashamed to talk about it. That's why it's just really hard to pick it.

How her mother coped with the diagnosis

Upon her diagnosis until her death, she really never complained, and always showed strength, even in her most frail days. She tried really hard not to allow the disease to burden us as kids. She tried to ensure that we lived our lives as normally as possible, and she fought a bloody good fight and did everything in her power to stay alive. She never believed that she would die from the disease, even though her prognosis was dire for the most part of her journey. She also lived well past six months after the doctors and professors said she would. Now as an adult and 39 years of age looking back, I think it would have been a lot easier just to give in and succumb than to go through the agony and pain that she did. I know that sounds kind of dark, but it's true.

The importance of advocacy, and not just from sufferers

We all need to raise our voice together and advocate for the sufferers who often lose their voice too early. There's just simply not a lot of advocates left. They all passed.

How her mother’s death brought her closer to her brother

I think losing our mother definitely brought us closer than ever before. We were always pretty close, but it was definitely, in hindsight, a poignant time that we were drawn together far more than before. I'm grateful for that, because I know that grief can often have the opposite effect. One of the reasons why we started the brand was that we could do something together, and maybe even the back of our minds, it was something that we wanted to make our mum really proud. So, I guess, yes, her death has probably defined us. I do think that this campaign has had a tremendous healing effect, because we are able to talk about it publicly for the first time ever, and through talking and through having conversations around it, it really does heal. It's been very powerful.

The values she lives by as a leader

My leadership style has always been about inclusion, inspiring through the way in which I lead: fairness, deep appreciation for my team, and respect and having an open door policy. Now, I also think an important thing to mention is, especially in the field that I'm in, it's creative. I have to ensure that I have a renewed sense of energy. I noticed that whenever I haven't, it's affected the team. Every season I try and ensure that I have a space to, whether it was on the back of a fabric buying trip, I'd just hop over to somewhere and have a little bit of an inspiration trip moment, or now that we can't go overseas, I'll go to the country to have a renewed sense of energy, so that it can really rub off on my team. I see that as being really, really, really helpful and effective. 

I also think that the brand has a platform, and I think it's  important to make a difference in people's lives, whether it's through thoughtful design, like I've talked about, making clothes to make people feel beautiful, or giving people a platform who usually wouldn't. I think this motivates the team because they know they're working towards something that's bigger picture.

No business plan? No problem!

We didn't sit down and write a business plan like most normal new startup business owners do. For a long time, Marc would rattle on, saying, "Camilla, we really need to sit down and do that business plan." I kept saying to him, "But I know what I want to do, and I can see where we're going to go." After a while, obviously we had to sit down and have that conversation and put a business plan together. But like I said before, it's about gut. I think I trust that, and Marc has amazing gut instincts as well, and he also trusts the data.

On motherhood and how it’s changed her working life

My work home life has changed a lot over the years. From the beginning when my girls were really little, or even when they were born, we were still a relatively small business with very, very big plans for the future. So, I felt an enormous amount of guilt going back to work really soon. My middle daughter was born five weeks before fashion week, which as you can imagine was an incredibly intense time. I remember I was breastfeeding, bringing her to headquarters in the cradle, and every day just going, "What am I doing?" In hindsight, it was the most stressful time of my career, but I got beautiful cherished memories of those early days. It's wonderful we felt both extremes.

When I was pregnant with my son, my third child, I sat back and thought I need to have a really big think about how I'm going to navigate this, because I didn't want it to be the same, and I really wanted to make sure I was kind to myself and to my son. I took about three months maternity leave, which was huge, because I'd only ever taken like three weeks with the girls, but I knew that it was important. I really wanted just more balance. 

Now I do feel like I've got a lot of balance. Now that my kids are older, I'm back at work five days, but I'm a lot more present. I'm able to make them dinner every night and have family meals. It's beautiful, and I'm proud to have that, and I'm proud that I've managed to carve that time out. But when they go to bed, I get back on the computer at my desk and I keep working. So, you know, you just struggle. With responsibilities that I have, and the demands, it's just... what you gotta do.

She still pinches herself when she sees someone wearing her designs

As a family, whenever we see someone out with something from our collection, we say, "Spotto," and we go, "Isn't that awesome?" I take those moments and I cherish them, because I remember the first time I ever saw someone wearing a Camilla and Marc dress, and I was with Marc. We were walking down the street and pinched ourselves. 18 years later, that feeling has not changed.

To purchase a limited edition camilla and marc ‘Ovaries, Talk About Them’ unisex t-shirt or hoodie, visit camillaandmarc.com. Every single dollar of profit goes directly to associate professor Caroline Ford at the UNSW ovarian cancer research group, with the aim to develop early detection tests.