The ghost of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s style has been haunting New York fashion for a while now, wafting in on the wave of 1990s minimalism, pencil skirts, square-toe loafers and opera gloves.
And it is only about to be more ubiquitous, thanks to Ryan Murphy’s new series, “Love Story,” about Ms. Bessette’s marriage to John F. Kennedy Jr., a relationship that became a pop culture myth and that ended tragically with a plane crash when they were in their 30s.
Debate the dramatic quality of the series all you want, but there’s no question that the filmmakers got the clothes right (at least after a rough beginning, when some teaser photos from the set produced a social media outcry about badly chosen shoes and so on).
Above all, “Love Story” captures the allure of 1990s Calvin Klein, the fashion brand at which Ms. Bessette Kennedy worked, and that she wore perhaps better than almost anyone else. The reticence of those clothes, as well as their no-nonsense allure, matched her own affect perfectly, and in turn she embodied the Calvin Klein look.
So the fact that the first episode of “Love Story” dropped the night before the Calvin Klein fashion show seemed as if it were written in the stars.
Would Veronica Leoni, the Calvin Klein creative director, lean into that era of Calvin, rethinking what those staples meant almost three decades later? Would she offer her own take on the slip dress, the boot cut, the white shirt? Would the “Love Story” stars, Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly, be in the front row?
Nope. Despite having the most celebrity guests of New York Fashion Week (including Dakota Johnson, Jennie, Jodie Turner-Smith and François Arnaud from “Heated Rivalry”), the only star from the show who was present was Grace Gummer, who plays Caroline Kennedy.
“We started the season thinking about what’s the stereotype of Calvin that everybody knows,” Ms. Leoni said after the show, after air-kissing her guests and posing for the requisite photos. “And we tried to go before that, to the late ’70s, early ’80s.” A time when, she said, the brand was less casual, less minimal.
It was a mistake.
In part that is because ceding Calvin Klein’s rights to the fashion territory it once ruled opens the door for other companies inspired by the look of Mr. Murphy’s show to start cannibalizing that territory. (A label called Lunya, in partnership with FX, is already offering what it calls “the silk icons capsule, an ode to ’90s New York romance.”)
And in part it is because going back to an earlier time in Calvin history is essentially going back to the time before Calvin became Calvin; the time when Calvin Klein the man was still figuring out what Calvin Klein the brand was. The time when it wasn’t just less minimal, it was less distinct — still finding its way toward what it would eventually become. Kind of confused.
As, perhaps unavoidably, was Ms. Leoni’s resulting collection.
A series of suits with the sleeves ripped off on men and women that made the biceps a starring body part seemed promising but then gave way to some experimentation with backless suiting and dresses that looked serious from the front but revealed slips from the rear. A great white racer-back tank dress, the neck and straps trimmed in tiny beaded threads like the arms of a paramecium, and a strapless back sheath that flashed one bra-encased breast seemed very Calvin. But a finale gown of billowing white and metallic orange silk looked as if it had gotten lost on its way to Vegas.
There was a set of long underwear under a cool double-layer trench, perhaps because Calvin isn’t Calvin without some undies, and a single pair of jeans made to mimic Calvin’s first jeans from the late 1970s. Even some four-button (four button!) jackets. There was a lot, and not all of it made sense. Especially not together.
It’s commendable that Ms. Leoni wants to avoid the easy clichés of Calvin Klein — wants to make it her own — but this isn’t necessarily the way to do it. Not every period in a brand’s history is worthy of revival.
One hallmark of Mr. Klein’s style, once he really found it, was the rigor with which he approached his work and the way he was able to distill each look, and each collection, to its essence. That’s what is on view, ironically, in “Love Story.” In a chaotic time, such clarity has a power and relevance all its own. Ms. Leoni should embrace it.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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