Scrolling through shots from AURALEE's recent New Balance 204L sneaker campaign, I was struck by a sudden onset of Major Styling Envy. Every model’s fit was effortless, each layer felt aligned, and every hue complemented the others in such a way that I immediately wanted to run out and buy a copy of A Dictionary of Color Combinations.

Sure, the shoot leaned into the trend of overstacking outfits with accessories — one model’s buttery yellow New Balances were paired with a second, purple set hanging elegantly off her rucksack — but damn if it didn’t make me want to pair my shoes with more shoes (and I don’t even like sneakers). 

The styling, in other words, is as far as you could possibly get from my own reality: a regular bout of pre-outing panic as I slip in and out of shirts and pants, cycling through options until I just wear the first one I tried on, all while WhatsApping four friends about how exhausted I’ve become with my entire wardrobe.

As I scrolled through the production credits, seeking the mastermind behind these achingly cool fits, a name appeared that made everything click cleanly into place: Charlotte Collet. 

A “Charlotte Collet look” is easy to identify: she favors pops of bright primary colors, often set against deep black for contrast, and unfussy, pared-down looks that still manage to drip with elegance; it’s Parisian, but free of stuffiness or cliché. 

Since decamping from a small village in southern France to the streets of Paris, Collet has become something of a secret weapon in the industry, bringing her touch of élégance naturelle to major luxury labels and smaller brands for more than a decade — her styling credits at the likes of Hermès and Chanel Beauty date back to the mid-2010s.

But it's the past two years of work for some of the industry’s more cool-but-quiet labels that prove her golden touch is catching on: she worked on the Spring 2026 campaigns for Tod’s, Jil Sander, and Babaà this year, and styled lookbooks for Proenza Schouler, A.P.C., Carolina Herrera, and AURALEE last year (she's a longtime AURALEE collaborator and has helped define the Japanese label's look as it's become ubiquitous).

Even fast fashion has gotten the Collet boost, with the stylist working on Zara’s sublime Red for Spring campaign (amid the fast-fashion label's wider push to enter an era of respectability).

Putting together a good outfit is a special kind of alchemy, and it’s refreshing to see Collet’s work appear across brands. If I could pass a law to make everyone adhere to the Charlotte Collet mode of dress for a bit, trust me, I would. I’d even take a personal styling session.

But for now, I’ll take the occasional treat of stumbling upon her work BTS shaping the visual identity of some of fashion’s coolest brands. 

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