WARDROBE.NYC Just Turned Carhartt WIP Into a Luxury Label
WARDROBE.NYC is named appropriately. Co-founders Christine Centenera and Josh Goot created the label with big picture perspective of the daily uniform in mind. Plenty of companies promise perfect staples: WARDROBE.NYC will sell you an entire refined closet.
Rather than divvy up the effortless basics that informed WARDROBE.NYC's debut collection, for instance, Centenera and Goot exclusively offered the 10-piece luxury line as a complete wardrobe for $1,500, even including an exclusive pair of adidas sneakers.
"We’ve always been interested in updating archetypes of urban dress," Centenera tells Highsnobiety.
Though Centenera and Goot now release their high-end essentials separately, their seasonless drops — which range from American-made denim set-ups to easy athleisure — are still designed to be sold as all-in wardrobes.
WARDROBE.NYC's collaboration with Carhartt WIP takes some of those essential pieces, the go-to daily drivers that workwear brands like Carhartt do so well, and amps them up to the nth degree.
"In many ways, the rigour of Carhartt WIP’s identity lent itself to [our design] process," explained Goot.
"Carhartt WIP is a blank canvas, and that’s how we see Wardrobe.NYC — the idea that the clothing is secondary to the individual and does not define the wearer’s self expression," Centenera continued.
Offered as an eight-piece or four-piece capsule ($2,750 and $1,250, respectively) through WARDROBE.NYC's website — the 10 womenswear items can also be purchased individually — WARDROBE.NYC's Carhartt WIP line isn't merely a retread of Carhartt's trademark pieces.
Instead, WARDROBE.NYC created its own silhouettes — insulated parkas fitted with diamond quilting, down-filled reversible bombers, jersey leggings fitted with pockets made of Carhartt's signature Dearborn Canvas — realized them in all-black, aside from a single white tee.
"For WARDROBE.NYC, the collaboration with Carhartt WIP reaffirms our founding principles – a commitment to practical minimalism, functional design, and a wardrobe of black essentials." said Goot.
Exposure to brands like Vetements and YEEZY has long since prepared us to see blue collar shapes cut trim and stylized in monochrome but WARDROBE.NYC doesn't deal irony or repurposed vintage — remember, these garments are designed especially for this collaboration.
These are workaday bombers, boiler suits, and skirts rendered in hardy canvas and affected with a crop — as simple as the tough stuff that you would normally expect from Carhartt WIP and the consummate contents of a carefree closet.
