Dame Zara Kate Bate DBE (née Dickins; previously Fell and Holt; 10 March 1909 – 14 June 1989) was an Australian fashion entrepreneur.

[3] In 1929, aged 19, Bate and her friend Betty James opened a dress shop named "Magg" on Little Collins Street, funded by a loan of £150 (equivalent to $14,000 in 2022) from her father.

Bate carried on alone for another year,[4] becoming exhausted by her work of purchasing fabric and designing, sewing and fitting dresses.

[4] Bate worked in marketing for her father's food manufacturing business during World War II, after separating from her first husband.

[10] The business was immediately successful, benefiting from strong interest in designer wear after the end of wartime clothing rationing.

[13] In 1964 The Canberra Times reported that she regarded her "greatest fashion triumph" as a mother-of-pearl silk skimmer dress worn by Tania Verstak, the winner of the Miss International 1962 pageant.

She praised the miniskirt style that Jean Shrimpton had controversially introduced to Australia the previous year, although noting that it did not suit all figures, and expressed her disdain for hats.

Harold Holt was a member of Robert Menzies' cabinet continuously from 1949, becoming deputy Liberal leader in 1956 and Treasurer in 1958.

Zara Holt was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1968, for "devotion to the public interest".

In the early 1970s, Dame Zara promoted Maxwell House instant coffee and Amana microwave ovens and refrigerators in television commercials.