Camille Charrière x NA-KD Collaboration: A Chic Homage to ’90s Style

Camille Charrière’s is a woman who’s reputation (and closet!) proceeds her. For more than a decade, the British-French fashion journalist has been in the public eye for her insightful sartorial commentary and seemingly endless closet that’s the object of envy. Although Charrière’s reputation as a style muse has been defined by sharp personal style and love of vintage, her latest collaboration with Swedish high-street fashion brand, NA-KD, is about an entirely different woman: the fictional Kathleen Kelly, played by American actress Meg Ryan, in the classic ’90s rom-com, You’ve Got Mail.

“It’s my ultimate autumn movie, the second the leaves start to fall,” Charrière jokes to Who What Wear over Zoom. Looking at the collection— I see it: cozy cardigans, oversize coats you can practically drown in, and muted color palettes reminiscent of nostalgic hues during the age of dial-up internet. Although you’d never expect it at first, the Camille Charrière x NA-KD collaboration, launched at fall’s mid-point at the end of October, hits just right. Launched on October 27th, the 34-piece collaboration arrives at a competitive price-point, ranging from $30 for a simple headscarf to $630 for a premium leather trench.

Between hours-long, detailed business meetings in Sweden and amid a deeply personal IVF journey, Charrière says the capsule has been nearly two years in the making. Although there’s times she’s been nervous that the clothes didn’t feel fresh (something, she admits, is only natural after you’ve been staring at samples for months on end), the social media reaction to her and the team’s hard work was incredibly rewarding— and, much to her delight, a sign that her inspiration for a time when clothes simply looked and felt better was something people were missing in their closets, too.

“I really wanted to work on pieces that are definitely things that you’ve already seen in a million iterations, but give you a reason to want this piece— maybe it’s rethinking the cut of a jumper or fastening buttons down the back.” she said. “And that’s kind of how I dress every day myself anyway, because I have my statement pieces, and then I have everything else, which are the building blocks of my outfits.”

The ’90s feels like the last, true time it felt like women lived in their clothes and, in Charrière’s mind, a pivotal referential point when it comes to fine-tuning her personal style, even today. “There was this really strong sense that clothing was your second skin, that it wasn’t something that you needed to update or change,” she explains, walking me through her collection with NA-KD. “There was just this idea of things are meant to be used and they’re meant to be functional whilst also making you look good and making you feel like yourself.” Along with Ryan’s on-screen character, Charrière’s goes on to namedrop Gwyneth Paltrow, Sofia Coppola, and Anna Wintour as muses for her latest collab.

While 2024’s style algorithms push out trends faster than we can swipe our credit cards, the ’90s (and, by extension, the NA-KD collaboration) is all about the rise of a subtle, logo-less, work-horse inspired look Charrière dubs as “anonymous,” For most of these women, style wasn’t always the number one thing they were focused on, but they still managed to look good and pull together outfits that look like them, she explained.

“I think the reason why people are so obsessed with the 90s and the noughties is because women, when you look at pictures of them back in those days, their clothes look lived in. Their clothes look like they serve a purpose, and they’ve been using them for a while, and I think that’s something that we’ve lost track of,” Charrière explains. One week we’re a mob wife, the one after, we’re brat, she jokes, but there’s a real problem with perception. “We’re all like, so quick to want to jump on the next trend that we forget, like who we are and what serves us and what suits us.”