Calvin Klein: Nostalgia or Now?
Lots of people have been in my DMs asking for my thoughts on the Calvin Klein Collection reboot. Lies! One person asked, but I’m here to share my two cents anyway.
This show was the most highly anticipated of NYFW. If the relaunch of a 5-decades-old label is what’s getting people hyped about NYFW, that says rather a lot about the state of ennui. So, Veronica Leoni (formerly of The Row and Phoebe’s Celine) had a great deal resting on her spaghetti-strapped shoulders.
The show was beautiful. It was clean, serene, elegant and poised. It looked like 1990s Old Calvin. But is that a compliment? Or a problem?
Since every current womenswear brand of note – from Khaite to COS – now mimics the 90s minimalist aesthetic, it’s become, let’s just say it, predictable. While using the OG Calvin Klein blueprint makes sense on paper, it was missing the crucial component that everyone desires from fashion – fresh energy, unexpectedness, something weird. In short, a surprise. I recall the throat-clutching in the early 90s one season when Calvin showed a collection of soft, knee length skirts with flat shoes. Absolute filth! The outrage! This is kind of what we crave in fashion, to feel something, even if it’s disgust. But I suspect that wasn’t in the brief. (Hey, it didn’t work with Raf Simons. Critics loved it but the customer didn’t.)
I’m guessing CK’s owner PVH doesn’t really want modernity and newness. It wants a commercial, easy-to-understand product, but elevated. If that’s the case, then, yes, give us all the high V-neck sweaters, accompanying long, slender-legged pants and deconstructed trench coats. (Plus, the unexplainably sexy specs.) The “90s minimalist wardrobe staples” (as Net-a-Porter’s buyer described them to WWD) will sell, if marketed well. Veronica promised the NYT’s Vanessa Friedman “sexitude”, so let’s have some sophisticated sexiness a la 90s muse Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (but warmed up a few degrees) in the advertising and marketing, as that’s what’s missing with the current crop of androgyny-leaning minimalists.
If Phoebe Philo owns twisted kink, perhaps Calvin can deliver the original tactile sensuality for a new age in place of overdone boxy froideur. I mean, the dream team is assembled – with Jane How on styling, Guido on hair and Diane Kendal on make-up; I think there are enough ingredients to produce something with the essence of Old Calvin plus the shock of the new.
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Calvin Klein Collection SS25 / Highsnobiety
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