This season at Calvin Klein Collection, Veronica Leoni’s impulse was to strip things back. Gone was menswear from the runway for a start, with the Italian designer instead casting her attention to six ‘foundational pieces’ that define Calvin Klein the brand, but also happen to be the elements of most women’s wardrobes. Namely: ‘the coat, the shirt, tailoring, the trouser, the pencil skirt, the slip.’
One inspiration was the work of American Minimalists, whose mid-20th-century principles of reduction were no doubt an influence on Calvin Klein himself (in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the American designer created clothing that was a riposte to the previous decade's excess). ‘American Minimalism was a discipline of removal: take away everything that does not carry the work, until only what is necessary remains,’ said the Italian designer, whose S/S 2027 runway show marked her fourth as creative director.
Walter De Maria, Truth / Beauty (1990–2016)
‘Calvin drew from that and turned it toward the body. I turn it toward the woman inside it,’ she continued. ‘My minimalism begins there, in the relation between design and a body, with nothing in between. Take everything away. What is left is desire.’
Held in Terminal Warehouse, a 19th-century former freight hub in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, the stripped-back showspace was installed with sculptural works by the artist Walter De Maria, a pioneer of American minimalism alongside figures including Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Frank Stella. They had been curated by Antwaun Sargent, an New York-based writer, curator, and director at Gagosian, who authored The New Black Vanguard Photography Between Art and Fashion in 2019.
A look from the show, which saw Veronica Leoni strip things back to six ‘foundational pieces’
‘I first became involved through a meeting with Veronica, when she shared the show’s theme of American Minimalism and asked me to curate the art for the space,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘Given the iconic setting of Terminal Warehouse, Walter De Maria immediately felt like a natural choice. As a key figure of American Minimalism, with landmark New York installations such as The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), his work offered a compelling dialogue with Calvin Klein and the architecture of the space.’
Spread across three rooms, the pieces chosen were Truth / Beauty (1990–2016), ‘a series comprised of stainless-steel polygonal rods set on granite bases,’ as Sargent describes; 14-Sided Open Polygon and 16-Sided Open Polygon (both 1984), ‘geometric stainless-steel sculptures punctuated by a single steel ball’, and 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows (1985), which features 42 ‘precisely arranged’ steel rods and was the first work to greet guests on arrival.
Walter De Maria, 14-Sided Open Polygon and 16-Sided Open Polygon (both 1984)
‘[They all] speak to De Maria’s fascination with geometry, repetition, and mathematical order, while their polished steel surfaces interact with the architecture, light, and movement of the fashion show,’ explains Sargent. ‘De Maria was equally concerned with how viewers experience his artworks as he was with the works themselves. The sculptures achieve a paradox: [they] maintain intense physical heft while appearing delicate through precise geometric fabrication and the reflective nature of stainless steel.’
‘There is a natural connection between the principles of American Minimalism and the design language of Calvin Klein, particularly in their emphasis on clarity, restraint, and essential form,’ he continues. ‘Calvin Klein has long embraced this sensibility through clean lines, precise proportions, and simplicity, while always maintaining a close relationship to the body. De Maria similarly uses repetition, geometry, and precision to reduce sculpture to its essential elements, while still creating works with an extraordinary physical presence.’
Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from New York Fashion Week.