There hasn’t been a Calvin Klein runway show in almost seven years. Calvin Klein himself has not attended a runway show for his brand in nearly two decades. But on Friday, the brand, now designed by Veronica Leoni, and Mr. Klein returned.
It was Day 2 of New York Fashion Week and the official unveiling of the Calvin Klein Collection, the high-end, high-fashion expression of the Klein look. The one that would prove it’s not just about jeans and underwear anymore.
It was a homecoming in more ways than one.
The show was held on the ground-floor gallery space at 205 West 39th Street, the garment district headquarters where Mr. Klein moved in the 1990s and where the company remains. The space was white, as per the original Calvin minimalist aesthetic, with white benches and a white carpet displaying a new logo in the black typeface of the old Obsession perfume ads. Mr. Klein, 82, who sold his company to PVH in 2002 and has mostly been off the fashion grid since then, made his entrance in a natty, black three-piece suit and tie like a good-will ambassador from another time.
Seated next to him was his former wife, Kelly Klein, and across the runway were his former muses, Kate Moss and Christy Turlington, in tailored black Calvin coats; Ms. Moss wore a slip dress beneath her coat. Nearby, Mario Sorrenti, who had photographed her naked Obsession ads back when they were a couple, was chatting to friends.
“It’s very emotional,” Mr. Klein said of being back in his old office building and seeing his label back on the runway. It was a reminder of the heady days when Calvin Klein defined a certain kind of breathy, urbane American sportswear and drew the attention of the crowd to New York. The air was replete with nostalgia.
So, for both good and bad, were the clothes.
In an interview before the show, Ms. Leoni said that her goal was to pick up from the day Mr. Klein last walked out the door. She did so, with a dual-gender collection that acted as a warm-up run through the Calvin playbook of the late 1980s and ’90s: slick, clean-lined C-suite suiting (check); minimal, cocooning outerwear (check); lingerie cocktail looks (check); grunge plaids and denim (check). You get the idea.
There was even a CK One bottle, in honor of the 1994 perfume that once sold 20 bottles a minute, turned into an evening minaudière and a little pendant worn around the neck like a charm. Ms. Leoni proved she understood the heritage and embraced it.
The problem is, since Calvin left and the label went through various iterations under his successor designers — and especially since 2018, when PVH abandoned the high-end collection — many other brands, big and small, have done their own versions of Calvin. Some of them very well.
His influence helped shape the Row, Toteme, Phoebe Philo and smaller brands like Kallmeyer. At this point, when a romance with all things ’90s is a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon, it’s understandable that Ms. Leoni would want to pay homage to, and reclaim, the legacy that is rightfully hers. But it’s not enough.
She needs to do more than simply engage with the past; she needs to take it into the future. Mr. Klein pushed boundaries in so many ways: with the provocation of putting his name on jeans and underwear, with his overtly sexual ads, with his willingness to strip excess away. To really be true to the brand, Ms. Leoni should push forward, too.
There were hints of this in her collection. In, for example, the just-rolled-out-of-bed silk pajama suiting for men and women, ice-blue silks that slithered around the body and made comfort dressing more come-hither.
Likewise in the blanket-like wool coats and trenches clutched to the torso, including one terrific look made from hundreds of springy organza loops. Also in a strapless evening dress with a sweetheart neckline and a train of silk fringe looped around one forearm like a sheet hastily wrapped around the body because the doorbell had rung in a … well, delicate moment.
A gunmetal-gray long-sleeve T-shirt and skirt covered in enameled paillettes that could be brushed forward and back like a reversible sequin pillow offered decoration without frivolity. It practically begged to be touched. She should lean further into her own more twisted instincts.
At the end of the show, Ms. Leoni took her bow and then ran over to Mr. Klein to pay her respects. He kissed her on both cheeks, delighted. They had staked their claim. It was a start.
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