Christopher Esber was born in 1987 in Sydney's western suburbs, the youngest of three children of Lebanese immigrants, both teachers, and grew up in Merrylands. By nine, an aunt who had worked as a seamstress had taught him to sew and cut patterns. He studied at the Fashion Design Studio at TAFE NSW, graduating in 2008 in the same year as Dion Lee; his mentor Nicholas Huxley chose him to present his graduate collection at Australian Fashion Week that year. He then spent twelve months training with a tailor.
In 2010, aged 22 and with a small loan from his parents, he founded his label and made his solo debut at Australian Fashion Week. The Sydney retailer Belinda Seper took it on at The Corner Shop. In 2012 he presented in New York as one of the Woolmark Company's "Australian Five" and won the L'Oréal National Designer Award in Melbourne. In 2013 he won the Australian round of the International Woolmark Prize, representing Australia at the final in Milan; he won the emerging designer award at the 2014 Australian Fashion Laureate, and in 2015 Vogue Italia named him its most talented designer for Australia-Pacific.
His international breakthrough came around 2019, when stylists including Karla Welch and Law Roach began dressing clients in his work; he has recalled cycling across Paris to deliver a dress for Zendaya. The label joined Net-a-Porter in 2020, added shoes in 2019, eyewear in 2023 and handbags, swim and jewellery in 2024. By 2025 it sold through more than 130 stockists in 46 countries, among them Mytheresa, Neiman Marcus, Moda Operandi, Galeries Lafayette and Harrods.
In 2023 the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode invited him onto the official Paris calendar, and he made his on-schedule debut that September; weeks later he was named Designer of the Year at the 2023 Australian Fashion Laureate. In June 2024 he became the first Australian to win the Grand Prize of the ANDAM Fashion Award, carrying a €300,000 grant and a year's mentoring from Anthony Vaccarello. He was named to the BoF 500 the same year. His first full Paris runway show came in March 2025, and his Spring 2026 show closed Paris Fashion Week at the Australian Embassy.
His Fall 2026 collection, shown in Paris in March 2026, took David Cronenberg's Crash as its starting point, translating upholstery, airbags, seatbelts and car interiors into clothes: diamond-perforated leather, a laminated leather bomber traced by a circular zip, a cream sweater backed in airbag nylon and racing stripes of silk georgette. He was after "a quiet charge", he told Vogue, rather than overt sexuality. Vogue's Tina Isaac-Goizé judged it among the most convincing of the season's mechanically minded collections, noting that though "highly technical in execution, it felt easy".
Esber's work pairs deconstructed tailoring with fluid drape, cut-outs and handmade metal hardware, including metal corsetry and buttons of crushed ceramic. He describes a process of subtraction, "to arrive at the purest version of a concept", and a recurring tension between office wear and the beach: "women in the office daydreaming of a holiday or escape". He designs, he says, for "a woman who loves fashion, but she is not willing to surrender herself to it". He has named Nicolas Ghesquière's Balenciaga and Miuccia Prada as touchstones.
In December 2024 he opened his first store, a pop-up in Sydney's Strand Arcade, as the first step in a planned retail expansion, and in 2025 he said he would design menswear for the first time.