In the late 2000s, when he was still working as creative
director for Kanye West, he and the rapper approached
Centenera at a Maison Margiela show in Paris.
“Kanye said, ‘I want to introduce myself. I really like how you dress.’
I started working with him, and I met Virgil the same day.” She went on to style
West’s Yeezy shows and become friends with his wife Kim, whose style evolution
has often echoed her own signature look. “Centenera is one-in-a-million,” Abloh
says. “Ask her to try on the most mundane garments and they instantly become
something sublime. It’s a young spirit with refinement that she adds on instinct.”
Raised in Adelaide by Spanish-Filipino parents, she developed an early interest
in the staples that make a wardrobe, recalling how she and her four sisters would
approach the same clothes in different ways. After moving to Sydney to study
anthropology, and art history and theory, a marketing job at Harper’s Bazaar
opened the door to styling. Centenera spent a decade at the magazine before
joining Vogue Australia in 2012. “I was taught that styling wasn’t about your
personal style, that you need to adapt to a brief. So I spent the first 10 years of
my career not making it about how I dressed.” Her personal look went on to
become her hottest commodity. “Then it became all anyone wanted. ‘What would
you do to make this dress better?’ Kanye would say. ‘How would you put this together?’”
Asked how she does put it together, she rolls her eyes. “Don’t ask me those
questions!” Starkly sculpted, her look is often the result of enthusiastic garment
alteration. “I take a lot of garments up or in, or make the shoulders bigger with
pads.” But she insists that’s as high-maintenance as it gets. During the shows in
Paris, she gets up at 7am every other day to work out with her boxing trainer. Her
beauty routine is minimal: black eyeliner, tinted moisturiser, and Tom Ford Shade
and Illuminate for a “nice dewy, sun-kissed look”. She goes to bed with wet hair,
and then twists it with tongs and adds hairspray in the morning. If it sounds
laissez-faire, perhaps it’s that casual Bondi Beach attitude shining through. Centenera
and Edgerton own a house in Sydney, as well as their NoHo apartment in Manhattan.
“Australia is where our family is and where we recharge,” she says, adding
that her only grief is that Bondi Beach life now comes with paparazzi attention.
The couple knew each other for some 20 years, but in 2018 their equally
travel-centric lives crossed paths when they both found themselves based
in New York. “We’re both very motivated and have hectic travel schedules,
but it really works for us in an unconventional way.” She reads all of his scripts;
he attends the shows she styles. “The fact that we don’t work in the same
industry is refreshing for us. We’re in awe of what each other do.”
Plenty of others are also in awe of what Centenera does, or more specifically,
what she wears. She recounts that when her friend Victoria Beckham saw
her in the knitted Chanel jacket she’s wearing for our interview, she bought
one for herself right away. “On that level, I guess I wear things that I then
see other people wearing, which is partly why I started Wardrobe NYC.”
Through her fashion brand of refined everyday essentials – the perfect
puffer jacket, the ideal oversized blazer, the ultimate legging – Centenera’s
own art of dressing has come full circle. “I used to pack just basics for the
shows, but go to Paris a day before and do a sweep of all my favourite stores.
I still do that now, just with Wardrobe NYC basics,” she says, contemplating
her brand’s raison d ’être. “Everyone’s becoming more sustainably minded: buy
less but buy better. I have always preferred to buy one great blazer over 10
mediocre ones. I could survive in life just having Wardrobe NYC pieces.” nRight: from left,
behind the scenes of Vogue
Australia’s December
2019 cover shoot with
Nicole Kidman; Centenera
working with Virgil
Abloh; wearing Wardrobe
NYC, Celine and Louis
Vuitton at Paris Haute
Couture in 2018In Wardrobe
NYC: from left,
Rosie Huntington-
Whiteley; Gigi
Hadid; and
Selena GomezWARDROBE NYCBelow: trousers,
£625. Right, from
top: tuxedo jacket,
£1,200. Holdall, £390.
Trainers, £162. All
Wardrobe NYC, at
Matchesfashion.comCHRISTINE CENTENERA; PALACE LEE/STARTRAKS PHOTO; GETTY IMAGES/GOTHAM/KIRSTIN SINCLAIR; SHUTTERSTOCK; PIXELATE.BIZ84SPOTLIGHT04-20-FOB-Christine-Cantenera_1985465.indd 84 11/02/2020 08:21