Christine Centenera has spent her career telling other people how to dress. As editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia, consultant to Louis Vuitton under Virgil Abloh and stylist to some of the most photographed people in the world, she has developed a point of view that is immediately recognisable: understated, precise, monochromatic and built on the conviction that a well-cut blazer and a good pair of trousers will outlast almost any trend.
In 2017, she and Australian designer Josh Goot formalised that point of view into a brand. WARDROBE.NYC is a conceptual composite of luxury essentials distilled into their purest and most desirable form, designed in New York and made in Europe. It is stocked by Net-A-Porter, Harvey Nichols and Farfetch and until now has existed firmly in the luxury price bracket. On August 6, that changes.
The WARDROBE.NYC H&M collection features louche-cut tailoring in a monochromatic palette, including wool coats, blazers and tailored skirts, alongside washed denim, padded bombers, hoodies and drawstring trousers. It draws directly from the WARDROBE.NYC archives, nearly a decade of refined essentials that the brand has been building since its first release, and translates them into H&M’s manufacturing at a price point that opens the label’s aesthetic to an audience that could not previously access it.
The original idea behind WARDROBE.NYC was simple: to help simplify the way people dressed every day, identifying key items that function as luxury essentials and isolating pieces each season that will not date and will last for years.
That philosophy transfers directly to the H&M collaboration.
“What we wanted, above all, was for all these pieces to become staples,” says Centenera. “You’re building the base of a wardrobe and mixing it back in with things you already own and with pieces from the collection itself. That versatility was always the goal.”
The collection was celebrated during Haute Couture Week in Paris on July 8 at Le Grand Café within the Grand Palais, where guests, including Teyana Taylor, Laura Harrier and Mia Regan, arrived dressed in the new pieces. The choice of Haute Couture Week as a launch moment is deliberate: it positions the collaboration within a conversation about craft and considered dressing rather than fast fashion, which is the right context for what WARDROBE.NYC has always been about.
For H&M, the collaboration represents something new in the brand’s long history of designer partnerships, which stretches back to Karl Lagerfeld in 2004.
“What makes this collaboration unique in our history is that essentials are usually one element of a collection,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, creative adviser and head of design for womenswear at H&M. “Here, they are the proposition. Every piece is built around versatility and timelessness, and that level of singular focus felt genuinely new for us.”
Goot described the collection as a timeless and honest statement that was essential and of the moment.
The materials reflect the seriousness of the brief: wool and fine wool blends; organic cotton and jersey; and recycled technical fabrics, each chosen for longevity rather than seasonal appeal. Rounding out the collection is a series of interchangeable layers that act as the foundation of a wardrobe in which everything goes with everything else. It is, in other words, a collection designed to be worn with itself and with whatever else is already in your wardrobe, which is a more useful proposition than most collaborations offer.
The WARDROBE.NYC H&M collection is available in South Africa from August 6 2026 at Sandton City and online from Superbalist.
Wanted
