Martin Grant

If you value quiet, beautifully cut clothes over loud branding, Martin Grant is squarely your kind of designer. He has dressed the likes of Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton and Emma Stone, and the appeal lies in clean lines and impeccable tailoring rather than logos. You are paying for craft and longevity, which is exactly why his pieces tend to stay in wardrobes for years.

He is best known as a master of clean, architectural tailoring, with coats and structured outerwear among his signatures. A Paris-based Australian designer, he built his name on precise pattern-cutting and timeless silhouettes rather than seasonal noise. That restraint is exactly what has drawn an A-list following over the decades.

Martin Grant is a Paris-based Australian fashion designer, born in Melbourne as one of six siblings. He became interested in fashion extremely early, his kindergarten drawings already featuring dresses, and was taught to sew by his seamstress grandmother. He left school at 15 to pursue fashion, joining evening-wear designer Desbina Collins.

He launched his first ready-to-wear line in 1982, building a reputation through the Fashion Design Council, which staged runway shows for emerging and avant-garde designers. In 1988 he received the Cointreau Young Designer award. Interestingly, he also briefly studied sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts before fully committing to fashion.

Grant left Australia in 1990, living for a time in London before settling in Paris to pursue fashion. He made garments there, at first with Australian artist Liz Sterling and later under his own name. Paris has remained his base ever since, anchoring his reputation for European-school tailoring.

In 1996 he opened a boutique on the Rue des Rosiers in Paris, and it was there that his major breakthrough came: supermodel Naomi Campbell modelled at his boutique. That moment helped put his name in front of the wider fashion world. From there his clientele grew to include some of the most photographed women in film and fashion.

Yes. In 2013, Martin Grant designed the uniforms for the Australian airline Qantas, a high-profile commission that brought his tailoring to thousands of staff. It is a striking example of how his precise, considered approach translates beyond the runway into real-world, everyday wear.

His clients read like a who's who of red-carpet talent. He has created outfits for Naomi Campbell, Cate Blanchett, Emma Stone, Tilda Swinton and Lady Gaga, among others. That kind of following speaks to how much his understated, expertly cut clothes are valued by women who can wear anything they like.

Yes. The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne has held exhibitions of his work in 2004 and again in a major retrospective in 2025, the latter after Grant donated more than 200 designs from his archive to the gallery. Few fashion designers earn a full museum retrospective, which underlines his standing as an Australian fashion great.