Veronica Leoni’s debut showing for Calvin Klein in February might have been met with mixed reviews, but on Friday at the downtown Manhattan Brant Foundation gallery, her follow-up spring collection was a standout.
“What Calvin and what the brand left into culture is more than an item, wardrobe or sense of taste, but a way of being and state of mind that’s a very energizing presence. You realize that actually, the brand belongs to the people more than it belongs to you,” Leoni said ahead of the show. “That’s a mission I’m also trying to filter in — what people feel familiar with, without being too foreign or strange, but also adding that twist of personality and a contemporary perspective.”
The creative director described her first collection as a good reset, and this season she was interested in capturing the brand’s cultural legacy through a stronger, more energetic lens through luxe product and world building. It wasn’t just the clothes and accessories that captured this mindset, but her front row of Solange Knowles and Emily Ratajkowski, who have recently worn the brand, as well as Lily Collins and Calvin Klein new campaign faces Rosalía, Jalen Green, Tontawan Tantivejakul and Mingyu.
Leoni was driven by a deep sense of intimacy and capturing that accidental, raw beauty she sees on the streets of New York, often in the early morning or late at night, amidst the social media-driven, magnified reality we all live in. She peeled back the layers with a strong proposition of minimalism that upheld the Calvin Klein legacy and Leoni’s eye for luxe fabrications and development.
She opened the show with clean pinafore apron dresses in structured silk and cotton before mixing in lean peek-a-boo tailored sets with jackets scooped down at the bust to reveal sheer technical bonded balconette bras — each displayed the balance of purity and subtle sex appeal she hinted at, but didn’t quite show, last season. Her tension between “exposure and intimacy” continued through softer “bikini” draped silk foulard dressing, one of which came in an archival 1974 floral print, while minimalist restraint shone through a chic monastic coat.
“There’s the feeling of the morning after that is very Calvin — that moment where you’ve had the night before and bring that naughty smile on yourself the day after,” she said of her 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. mindset. One could easily imagine her woman throwing on the collection’s stellar gray leather and crinkle trenchcoats and hybrid moccasin sneakers, small leather wristlets and keys in hand, on her way to grab a coffee. And for late nights returning home, taking off her crushed butter yellow leather slip and wrapping up in luxe, compelling “bathrobes” that mimicked toweling but were in laser-cut and intarsia leather.
It was a cinematic yet reality-driven expression of the New York urbanite with twists on American characters, as seen through bold-shouldered, draped “Dynasty” gowns casualized in cotton silk jersey; relaxed power dressing and men’s technical suiting; oversize workwear cargo shorts, and cheeky organza cheerleader pompoms tacked onto suspenders atop minimalist dresses.
And what’s more American than Calvin Klein underwear and jeans? Alongside great five-pocket denim, Leoni leaned into the “fetish” of the brand’s famous logoed elastic bands with a woven couture tweed dress, repurposed them onto eyeglasses and peppered them in long johns and men’s boxer dressing for everyday life.
“Bringing the underwear into our universe, for the first time, and really owning that business,” she explained. “In this awareness of the brand belonging to the people, I feel that the fetish creates an aspirational and top layer to the perception and the lifestyle of the brand itself.”