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It has been one year since Veronica Leoni presented her debut collection for Calvin Klein, which marked the first runway show from the American powerhouse since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018. Her task was not an easy one: Calvin Klein, which was founded in 1968 but would come to reshape fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, was always about a mood and a moment. Where the storied European houses have history – bulging archives, defining silhouettes, a runway show seared in the memory – Calvin Klein is a slip dress, a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, underwear. And all those advertisements: CK One, with its slouching gang of Steven Meisel-shot models, Kate Moss and Marky Mark embracing in white Y fronts and low-slung jeans, and that Brooke Shields ad (‘nothing gets between me and my Calvins’ – she was just 15 years old).
Calvin Klein Collection A/W 2026: a ‘hedonistic elegance’
It is impossible to replicate the cultural heft of these moments. A lesser designer might attempt to capture a similar shock factor; Leoni, who comes from roles at The Row and Moncler, began in the archives. Her astute, if restrained, opening collection channelled a more tempered sensuality – flushes of hot pink, overcoats grasped closed in the hand, sweetheart necklines – which she saw as echoing the namesake designer’s runway collections, memorable for their purity of design rather than overt sexuality. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ she said at the time. ’You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’
This afternoon (13 February), Leoni presented her third collection for the house at The Shed, erecting a circular runway in the centre of the vast Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed arts centre on New York’s west side. The Italian designer began the collection by looking back to the late 1970s, a time just before Calvin Klein had exploded into the public consciousness (the Brooke Shields ad aired in 1980). There was a 1976 pair of jeans, the first to appear on the Calvin Klein runway, which Leoni replicated, while the collection itself channelled what she described as a ‘hedonistic elegance’. ‘There was a rigour, a sophistication that seems to come from another time, but there was also this cult of the body [starting to emerge] that is extremely Calvin – we wanted to push that almost narcissistic kind of kink,’ she told reporters backstage.
So there was power-shouldered tailoring cut away at the back; cleverly manipulated vest tops that appeared as though the sleeves had been pulled up to expose the bicep; slices of ‘fur’ (it was actually trimmed and dyed shearling) and leather (some with the illusion of rubber); and dresses that twisted around the body, as if pulled on in haste. There was also a greater sense of dressing up than in her previous collections (blown-up corporate tailoring and trench coats felt almost fetishistic); backstage, Leoni said she wanted to show that Calvin Klein was not only about the casualwear with which it is synonymous. ‘The mainstream perception is all about the underwear, that casual lifestyle,’ she said. ‘But we explored the advertising he was doing at the beginning, and there were these beautiful, sophisticated women; there was this couture drape happening, and extremely chic suiting.’
Leoni described the outing as a little more ‘provocative’, and it certainly benefited from this bolder approach – this was by far her strongest collection for the brand yet. ‘We really wanted to celebrate the body; the cult of the body. And we are still so obsessed with the body,’ she said, noting that the bicep-bearing tailoring at the end of the show was a wink to the rippled bodybuilders of 1980s Venice Beach (now, the reference might be TikTok fitfluencers). ‘I think Calvin Klein was about this obsessive, almost thrilling and dangerous quest for beauty. This is about studying the Calvin Klein DNA and making it heroic – for now, for 2026.’
Follow our New York Fashion Week A/W 2026 coverage.
