In 1982, when Calvin Klein slapped his name on a pair of Y-fronts, put them on an Olympic athlete and showcased them on a monumental billboard in Times Square as if they were the attire of the gods, it was a revolutionary act.
The move changed not just underwear but ideas about what was desirable. Along with Calvin Klein jeans, the knickers became perhaps the most ubiquitous part of the brand, the thing that really changed everyone’s closets. Men’s and women’s.
So the idea by Veronica Leoni, the newish creative director, to plunder the undies drawer in her second collection, the better to rethink what, exactly, Calvin Klein means in the current moment, was pretty smart.
It was, in fact, the smartest part of an otherwise uneven collection, one where some perfect Calvinisms — the stripped-down apron dress, the matching shirt and deep-cuff pants, the tailoring — bumped up against some jarring missteps. (A bubble maxi-skirt? Huh?)
But back to the underwear! It’s always fun to go back to the underwear.
Or rather, back to the underwear elastic. You know, the band at the top of the briefs. That is really the thing that matters, the thing that always transformed an otherwise fairly normal pair of tighty-whities into a status symbol. One that was utterly Calvin.
In yesterday’s show, it appeared at the top of a pair of summery men’s striped boxer shorts turned actual shorts, shown with a matching shirt and tie, and at the waist of sheer white cotton leggings with a Y-front built in, worn under a teasingly draped blouse. And it appeared in less expected ways, as in the headband of the slick shades worn with an otherwise monastic white caftan dress.
But it was the long-afternoons-in-the-summerhouse dress in what looked like a nubby tweed that really caused a double take. The material was not, in fact, tweed at all but rather a hybrid weave created by an Italian factory in Como by mixing the elastic underwear bands with more classic fabrications.
As a result, the trademark of one garment was transmogrified into another, one displaying all the characteristics of classic Klein minimalism but with a layer of modern irony beneath. Every generation reinvents history for itself. This shaped that idea into clothes.
“It’s like an acknowledgment that Calvin Klein belongs, in a way, to everyone,” Ms. Leoni said after the show.
In case those watching didn’t get the point, the show soundtrack included the line from “Back to the Future” when Marty McFly is transported to the 1950s and his rescuer assumes his name is Calvin Klein because “it’s written all over your underwear.” It was a reminder of just how deeply embedded the CK waistband is in the pop culture pantheon.
In any case, the CK tape styles weren’t the only underwear pieces on the runway. Just the most obvious and the most successful.
There were sheer little bras peeking out from the deep-scoop necklines of otherwise office-appropriate suiting — fine, if not particularly original. Exaggerated garterlike belts hugged the waist and hips, closing with a hook and eye at the back and dangling giant pompoms that bounced off the models’ thighs as they walked. Ms. Leoni said they were her nod to cheerleader’s pompoms, but the idea was entirely lost in translation.
As for the silk-scarf diaper shorts with elastic waists, they ought never to have made it out of the experiment phase.
Women should never be put in diapers on any runway.
Still, that blooper aside, the underwear looks signaled what may be the best way forward for Ms. Leoni, a way to offer a meta-nod to the Calvin Klein history while simultaneously subverting it and making it her own — while bringing her potential audience in on the joke.
If clothes can make people smile, what can’t they do?
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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