Zimmermann

Two sisters from Sydney, Nicky Zimmermann and Simone Zimmermann, founded Zimmermann, the Australian fashion label, in 1991. The label began with clothes Nicky designed in her parents' garage and sold at Paddington Markets, opened its first shop in 1992, and grew into a ready-to-wear, swim and resort house that now shows in Paris and is majority owned by the American private equity firm Advent International. This encyclopedia covers it for its swimwear, which became one of the label's main businesses.

A Garage and a Market Stall, 1991

Paddington Markets, held on Saturdays in the grounds of a church on Oxford Street in Sydney's eastern suburbs, was a starting point for a generation of Australian designers. Nicky Zimmermann sold her first pieces there, made from designs drawn up at home. Simone joined her in the business the same year, and the label was formally founded in 1991. A first store followed in 1992.

Older versions of this page said the sisters began with swimwear at the market stall. Wikipedia's account of the label's history puts it the other way round: the business started with clothes, and "in the following years" extended into swim separates, then children's wear and accessories. Swimwear came early and grew large, but it was an extension of a womenswear label, not its origin.

The Swim Business

For an encyclopedia of lingerie, the swim range is the part of Zimmermann that matters most, because it brought womenswear detailing into a category that had been dominated by sports brands and plain resort labels. The label's swimwear is designed by the same team as the dresses and sold alongside them, so a bikini and a sundress from one season belong to the same collection. In shape it draws on lingerie as much as on athletic swimwear, with structured tops in the manner of a balconette bra sitting next to simple triangles and bikini bottoms cut at several heights.

The current collection structure shows how central this has become: Ready-to-Wear, Swim, Resort, Kids and Accessories, with swim and resort shown as distinct lines rather than as an afterthought.

Going Abroad

The label went online in 2008 with its own web shop. In 2011 it began trading in the United States and moved its collections onto the Northern Hemisphere calendar, so that a Zimmermann summer arrived in New York in June rather than in December. It presents ready-to-wear at New York Fashion Week, and made its debut at Paris Fashion Week in 2022, a clear signal of where the founders wanted the label to be compared.

Today Zimmermann runs about 56 stores across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, with showrooms in Sydney, London, France, Milan, New York and Los Angeles. It is also stocked by department stores and online retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods and Net-a-Porter.

Three Rounds of Outside Money

The family brought in investors in stages:

Year	Deal
March 2016	General Atlantic buys a minority stake
December 2020	Italian investor Style Capital acquires 70 percent; the Zimmermann family keeps 30 percent
August 2023	Advent International takes a majority stake in a deal valued at about A$1.5 to 1.75 billion; Style Capital keeps a minority holding

The valuation is the headline. A business that started at a weekend market was priced, thirty-two years later, at well over a billion Australian dollars.

What the Founders Kept

The family kept 30 percent after the Style Capital deal; the sources checked here do not say what it holds after the Advent sale. The label has stayed with a decorative, feminine look rather than the surf-and-sand image that much Australian fashion trades on, and its Paris debut was the logical endpoint of that choice. Swim still sits in the collection list next to ready-to-wear, as it has since the label's first years in Sydney.

Last updated October 1, 2026