Camille Charrière – A Caesura of Calm

In classical music, a caesura denotes a brief interval, an opportunity to take a breath. An avid music lover, Camille Charrière has always found a sense of calm through this genre, in particular. “There’s something so grounding and anchoring about it,” she explains. “Every time you listen, you hear something new.”

It’s the middle of Paris Fashion Week, but Camille is sitting on the living room floor of her West London apartment. Her kitten sleeps nearby and her husband makes occasional cameos in the corner of the screen. On-schedule shows today include Loewe, Coperni and her friend Harris Reed’s debut at Nina Ricci. However, Camille, who hasn’t had a proper respite since joining the industry over a decade ago, is taking an interlude. Makeup free, hair loose and unbrushed with Nike sweats on in place of designer digs. “I can tell you, it’s no secret,” she says
of the reason behind her absence.

“I’m doing IVF and my doctor told me to take it easy. Running around and being late for shows weirdly gets your adrenaline going. It’s really not good for your cortisol levels.”

Today, Camille is one of the world’s most prominent influenc- ers. Her signature feminine meets masculine, flirty yet considered signature style – a unique blend of her French heritage and London roots – captivating a growing audience of 1.4 million. But it was a hustle to get there. Until the
age of 25, Camille was a lawyer in Paris, before she chased a boy to London, finding out upon arrival that she couldn’t afford to study the extra time needed to continue her career in the country. Pivoting to a finance job instead, Camille would write about fashion during her lunch hour as a creative outlet outside of corporate confines, unintentionally becoming a found- ing member of the first wave of influencers in the process.

So too is Julia Fox: The brilliant and unapologetic way she wears whatever she likes, despite – per- haps, in part, due to – how riled up it makes people. “Her whole persona feels very anti-male gaze.” Camille’s had her own experience here. Her wedding dress, a see- through lace slip with a visible thong, saw her called ‘vulgar’, ‘hideous’ and ‘tacky’ online. “What the scathing reaction to my wedding dress indicated was how rife internalised misogyny still is; the idea that women subconsciously project sexist ideas onto other women and even onto themselves,” she wrote in response. “It’s caused by deeply entrenched, abstract ideas about how women should dress and behave – standards created by a patriarchal society.”

Recently, Camille has been in a period of transition: she got married, moved house, and became a cat mother. “A lot of people ask me if marriage feels different and for me, it’s a completely new journey,” she says. “Selfishly, I’ve been working for myself for a very long time. And I’ve also been financially independent. So I’ve had that element of being able to do what I want. Being married means that, actually, that’s not how it works anymore. Ultimately, you’re building a life together and there are compromises to be made. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just something to adjust to. I’ve really enjoyed the anchoring feeling of being in a partnership.”

I leave her in the late after- noon light, Classic FM playing quietly in the background of her calm home, a complete juxtaposition to the chaos she’d usually be caught up in on the other side of the channel. “This need for constant stimulation and newness and entertainment, which you can get working in fashion, it’s not necessarily good for you,” Camille muses. “You actually need time where you’re still. Not optimising or bettering yourself. Sitting at home with something beautiful that you’ve already listened to 50 million times.”