For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Veronica Leoni comes to Calvin Klein with credentials. There have been stints at The Row and Celine (during Phoebe Philo’s tenure), Jil Sander and Moncler, and the 2020 opening of her own label Quira, which was subsequently nominated for the LVMH Prize for Young Designers in 2023. ‘Purity of design is powerful,’ ran the tagline for the latter, a statement which undeniably chimes with Calvin Klein’s namesake, the godfather of American minimalism (Klein retired from the label in 2004).

‘My philosophy has always been the same,’ he said in 1984. ‘It’s always been spare, it’s always been about sensuality, it’s always been sophisticated. And above all, it’s always represented what I think is modern.’

This afternoon in New York, Leoni – who was born in Rome, Italy – staged her opening act as creative director of Calvin Klein Collection at the brand’s Midtown offices at 205 West 39th Street (in the role, she will design the brand’s two runway shows each year; the hope is that her aesthetic will trickle down to Calvin Klein’s more widely available commercial collections, from underwear to perfume). In the suitably spare showspace, unadorned save for the Calvin Klein logo written across the carpet, Leoni presented a collection she described as returning to the essence of Klein’s vision: notably a stripped-back minimalism and pulsing undercurrent of sensuality.

But while there was certainly a mood of reduction reminiscent of the designer’s 1990s collections running through the collection – crisp and rigorous black tailoring, bonded business overcoats, shrunken wool sweaters, baggy jeans – that contrasting mood of raw sensuality which made the label into a household name felt largely tempered (despite Leoni’s assertions that she wanted to bring a ‘sexitude’ back to the label, an expression coined by the designer in an interview with The New York Times prior to the show).

Instead, she noted a want to express a more intimate kind of desire, a flipping of the Calvin Klein woman from the object of desire to the one doing the desiring – details, like the clasping shut of a coat with the hand, a decolletage-bearing sweetheart neckline, or the flushes of hot pink, suggested a more tender kind of intimacy. ‘Sexiness has very much been on my mind,’ Leoni told reporters backstage. ‘I wanted to redefine femininity and masculinity in the landscape of today. So I kept in my mind this idea of American beauty; beauty in the most fresh and pure way.’

‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ she elaborated. ’You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’

The result was what Leoni called a ‘24/7 wardrobe’, the elements of which you could see resonating with the consumer (a square-toed pump and slipper, referencing a 1999 Calvin Klein collection, felt very of the moment, so too the series of voluminous draped jersey dresses which appeared towards the end of the show). Though whether it had the necessary frisson of difference to retain attention over an upcoming month of shows, remains to be seen – after stripping it all away, going forward Leoni might need to find bolder expressions of her vision to truly stand out.

That said, Leoni had the full support of Calvin Klein himself, who watched the show alongside his ex-wife, the photographer Kelly Rector (the designer’s perennial muses, Kate Moss and Christy Turlington, were also in attendance). ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

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