Yesterday, on the roof terrace of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse building in Marseille, Chanel presented its Cruise collection. Actor Sadie Sink of Stranger Things fame sat front row in an all-black look that felt noticeably different from the bright green, yellow, and pink tweeds of the runway, which mimicked the bold modernist tiles of the backdrop. But Sink wasn’t concerned with perfectly matching the vibe as much as she was interested in simply looking like herself.

“Usually, they have four or five looks laid out for you,” Sink tells me the morning after the show, ahead of her flight home from France. “I was drawn to this one immediately when I saw it on the rack, and kind of knew it was what I was going to go for. At this point, I really know my style, and I especially know my style with Chanel. They know what I like—and I know what I like.” And the black leather jacket with matching skirt—look 10 from the Fall/Winter 2024 pre-collection accessorized with Coco Crush earrings, bracelets, and earrings—is just what she likes.

Sink opted to wear the top mostly undone, with just one button clasped at her collarbones. “I love mixing classic, elegant silhouettes with a little bit of edginess,” she says. “So the silhouette of this look is very timeless, familiar—but when you break it apart, there’s these little tough details that kind of edge it up a bit. The bows on the sleeves brought this sweeter element to it. So I thought it was kind of the perfect fusion of edginess and classiness, which I always love to do in all of my looks.”

As for how she dresses when she isn’t sitting front row, Sink says her personal style really varies. “It’s a mix of a lot of different things. It depends on the day,” she says. “I definitely love accessorizing with bold statement pieces and focusing on a shoe or maybe a necklace, or even a jacket sometimes, but then having kind of a good foundation under all of it that’s just kind of classic.” Her appreciation for a classic is why she’s so drawn to Chanel. “Chanel is classic! It just is! It’s timeless.”

Sink is only 22, but she got her breakout role as Max Mayfield on the second season of Stranger Things at just 14. “As someone who has grown up in the industry, I’ve gone through a lot of different looks already,” she notes. And for the most part, she isn’t embarrassed to look back on them, as so many others in the industry are, which Sink attributes to working with Chanel for so many years now. The brand dressed her for her first premiere for the Netflix sci-fi horror series, in 2017, and event that was also her first foray into high fashion—an “aha!” moment that, she says, made her interested in “the art of fashion in general.”

“It’s been nice to partner with Chanel in this way,” she says, “because any look that I look back on, it just has this timeless quality to it. No matter how many years past, you still look back on it, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that still works today.’ ” The look for the most recent cruise collection is no exception—it’s one she already knows she’ll recall fondly.

As for her next look, Sink has her eye on something that walked down the runway not even 24 hours ago. “There was this strapless suit-and-skirt situation with a white bathing suit peeking out underneath and the sheer white gloves. And I loved that look because, again, it’s that combination of two things you wouldn’t normally see together! The daintiness of the gloves and the little ruffled bathing suit underneath, but the hardness of that structure and the darkness of this suit that she had over it,” she says. “That’s definitely something that I would wear in my life—at some point, hopefully!”

She laughs, but it’s not really a joke. Mostly because it feels like “some point, hopefully” isn't some far-fetched hypothetical. It’s right on the horizon. If anyone could wear a future Chanel classic look like that, it’s certainly Sink.

Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.