A Distinct Paring Down and Stripping Back at Calvin Klein

For Spring/Summer 2027, Veronica Leoni’s expression of today's Calvin Klein was edifying. There was a sense of cleanliness and conviction, of doing the very most, with the very least. It not only looked like Calvin, but felt like Calvin

Over the past couple of years, Calvin Klein has been at the forefront of popular – and populist – imagination like no time since about 1996, yet in much the same way. There are sexually provocative, overtly homoerotic advertising campaigns splashed groin-first over global billboards, and there’s a clean-faced Carolyn Bessette Kennedy – today, Sarah Pidgeon as her peroxided doppelgänger in Love Story – demonstrating how best to wear Klein. Many have bemoaned the fact that the Klein as a house and its creative director, Veronica Leoni, have failed to fully throttle that marketing opportunity, both in terms of hijacking Pidgeon’s attention-grabbing turn, and also in capitalising on our expectations of clothes bearing the name Calvin. Not so much anymore. If Leoni spent her first three Collection collections exploring what Calvin Klein could mean, her latest Spring/Summer 2027 show was an edifying expression of what Calvin Klein is, obtuse and multi-faceted as that may be. 

To start with, the space itself – a 19th-century warehouse in Chelsea – was stripped to bare brick walls, the only decoration an installation by the artist Walter De Maria. Yep, of course he’s an American Minimalist, and his work here was mostly stainless steel constructions placed low on the floor (plenty of guests accidentally walked through them, before being corralled by security staff). Leoni was consciously connecting that to her own approach– this season, a distinct paring down, stripping back. “Take everything away,” Leoni stated. What is left? “Desire,” she hopes.

There was a sense not only of cleanliness here – albeit fitting, for a label created in the name and image of a designer once dubbed Calvin Klein – but of conviction. Calvin seems like a simple proposition to many – it is, after all, rooted in simple wardrobing, American sportswear classics, big on blue jeans and y-fronts – but how to spin that into a fashion identity, and especially one that can resonate in the noise of 2026, is fiendishly difficult. If Leoni had stumbled in the past, like the guests over those minimalist building blocks on her warehouse floor, this time her footing was sure. It not only looked like Calvin, but felt like Calvin, with compact cotton or nylon tailoring in narrow, shoulder-hugging silhouettes, rangy hip-hugging trousers, slip skirts hitting just below the knee. The best of these was in transparent organza, with flat sandals – both a throwback, and a distillation of what Klein could mean right now. Similarly, the washed-out denims, sometimes lean jeans, sometimes twisted jackets, shirts, even Bermuda shorts under a pristine single-breasted duster coat. 

The only Klein-ification it was missing was the sex – low-scooped necklines and body-clinging jersey red sensuality rather than blatant eroticism, an essential component and something Leoni has yet to grapple with. As a body of work, it worked, managing to latch onto Calvin-isms, rather than clinging to them. Ironically, rather than twisting apart brand codifications, inverting or challenging them, as so many other fashion labels demand, Klein seems to work best when it obeys the rules. Bearing out Leoni’s stated intent, it was the most reduced and minimised looks that wound up looking the most overly desirable – a black suit shorn of buttons with a crisp white shirt, a long elderflower satin skirt with a white silk-jersey T-shirt, for evening. Doing the very most, with the very least. How Klein is that?