カルバンクラインのためのヴェロニカ・レオーニの鋭いビジョン

What does the name Calvin Klein mean? Unlike some brands, where the focus of the messaging has fuzzed with time and the passage of differing creative visions, our images of Klein remain crystal clear: blue jeans, white briefs, the raw sexuality of those black-and-white Obsession adverts, Kate Moss in a slip dress, Christy Turlington in a white shirt, the euphoric gender flux of CK One. Oh wait, there’s Brooke Shields too, with nothing between her and her Calvins. And Marky Mark dropping his. And, for the Boomers, Michael J Fox being called “Calvin Klein” because it was written on his underwear in Back To The Future. And we’ve barely talked about any of the fashion shows …

That’s the thing with Klein: the power of those images is such that every one is still pin sharp, and such is the breath and depth of its cultural resonance, in many cases it means something different to each and every one of them. That’s a gift for Calvin Klein’s creative director Veronica Leoni, but it’s also a potential albatross. How can you be everything, to everyone, all at once? And how to edit an idea of Klein from that embarrassment of riches?

Leoni is astute and refuses to be weighed down. She’s forging her own path at Calvin Klein, and although she’s embedded herself in the archives, those archives are more about image than actual garments. She told me she’d been pawing through the rare contact sheets from those Steven Meisel CK One ads from 1994 – which is my moment, honestly. I remember that Meisel campaign from magazines a couple of years later, and the distinct pebbly frosting of the bottle, shaped more like a hip flask than a scent flaçon. And there was the tangy citrus scent of a fragrance I could finally filch from my mother without accusations that I was wearing a “girl’s” perfume. Call it a Proustian Madeleine in 1990s Manchester (although I didn’t drink the stuff).

The CK One bottle-shaped minaudières from her first show made another appearance for Spring/Summer 2026, but otherwise Leoni looked to move things along. As well as the latent sensuality (distinct from sexuality) of those ads, she’s also evidently been looking at Calvin’s mid-90s shows – when it was still Calvin, before it began winking hard at Tom Ford and Helmut Lang – and tugged out spaghetti straps and apron-fronted dresses, as well as the CK underwear still worn today. 

That was all part of Leon tackling the big signature of Klein – sex. This season, she talked about “the taste for exposure”. That’s what the brand is all about, good and bad – remember the now-demure seeming 1995 jeans campaign banned for “cynical, exploitative and immoral” images, to quote the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (who sound perfectly reasonable). Conservative groups called for retailer boycotts. 

That furore was because Klein, the man, had – and Klein the brand has – a repute as a hedonist. It’s a well earned one. A Studio 54 habitué who, to some minds, co-opted jeans from the late 70s gay ‘Clone’ culture and proposed them as provocative attire for him and her. Yet don’t forget that in the 80s he got married, went to rehab, and launched a fragrance called Eternity, whose wholesome image and loved-up name served as kind of the anti-Obsession. 

So Leoni is taking a slowly-slowly approach to that signature Calvin sexuality – she’s probably closer to Eternity with chaste kerchiefs over the hair and pristine white shirts, although this time she did let loose a little. Underwear branding became outerwear detailing on shorts and a long dress criss-crossed with the CK elastic waistband, while two pairs of underwear were worn together, apparently equalling one outerwear garment, and an instantly recognisable one at that. Elsewhere, nudity was hinted at – not full-frontal, but through subtly shifting dresses of fringe, and a leather coat that seemed to have had an accident with the CK HQ paper shredder. 

Rip it up and start again – but leave a little remainder. How about that for a new way of dealing with legacy?

What does the name Calvin Klein mean? Unlike some brands, where the focus of the messaging has fuzzed with time and the passage of differing creative visions, our images of Klein remain crystal clear: blue jeans, white briefs, the raw sexuality of those black-and-white Obsession adverts, Kate Moss in a slip dress, Christy Turlington in a white shirt, the euphoric gender flux of CK One. Oh wait, there’s Brooke Shields too, with nothing between her and her Calvins. And Marky Mark dropping his. And, for the Boomers, Michael J Fox being called “Calvin Klein” because it was written on his underwear in Back To The Future. And we’ve barely talked about any of the fashion shows …

That’s the thing with Klein: the power of those images is such that every one is still pin sharp, and such is the breath and depth of its cultural resonance, in many cases it means something different to each and every one of them. That’s a gift for Calvin Klein’s creative director Veronica Leoni, but it’s also a potential albatross. How can you be everything, to everyone, all at once? And how to edit an idea of Klein from that embarrassment of riches?

Leoni is astute and refuses to be weighed down. She’s forging her own path at Calvin Klein, and although she’s embedded herself in the archives, those archives are more about image than actual garments. She told me she’d been pawing through the rare contact sheets from those Steven Meisel CK One ads from 1994 – which is my moment, honestly. I remember that Meisel campaign from magazines a couple of years later, and the distinct pebbly frosting of the bottle, shaped more like a hip flask than a scent flaçon. And there was the tangy citrus scent of a fragrance I could finally filch from my mother without accusations that I was wearing a “girl’s” perfume. Call it a Proustian Madeleine in 1990s Manchester (although I didn’t drink the stuff).

The CK One bottle-shaped minaudières from her first show made another appearance for Spring/Summer 2026, but otherwise Leoni looked to move things along. As well as the latent sensuality (distinct from sexuality) of those ads, she’s also evidently been looking at Calvin’s mid-90s shows – when it was still Calvin, before it began winking hard at Tom Ford and Helmut Lang – and tugged out spaghetti straps and apron-fronted dresses, as well as the CK underwear still worn today. 

That was all part of Leon tackling the big signature of Klein – sex. This season, she talked about “the taste for exposure”. That’s what the brand is all about, good and bad – remember the now-demure seeming 1995 jeans campaign banned for “cynical, exploitative and immoral” images, to quote the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (who sound perfectly reasonable). Conservative groups called for retailer boycotts. 

That furore was because Klein, the man, had – and Klein the brand has – a repute as a hedonist. It’s a well earned one. A Studio 54 habitué who, to some minds, co-opted jeans from the late 70s gay ‘Clone’ culture and proposed them as provocative attire for him and her. Yet don’t forget that in the 80s he got married, went to rehab, and launched a fragrance called Eternity, whose wholesome image and loved-up name served as kind of the anti-Obsession. 

So Leoni is taking a slowly-slowly approach to that signature Calvin sexuality – she’s probably closer to Eternity with chaste kerchiefs over the hair and pristine white shirts, although this time she did let loose a little. Underwear branding became outerwear detailing on shorts and a long dress criss-crossed with the CK elastic waistband, while two pairs of underwear were worn together, apparently equalling one outerwear garment, and an instantly recognisable one at that. Elsewhere, nudity was hinted at – not full-frontal, but through subtly shifting dresses of fringe, and a leather coat that seemed to have had an accident with the CK HQ paper shredder. 

Rip it up and start again – but leave a little remainder. How about that for a new way of dealing with legacy?