New York Is So Back At Calvin Klein

For her debut collection, designer Veronica Leoni drew on her “fictional image” of the city.

Published: February 12, 2025

New York Is So Back At Calvin Klein — Photo: Launchmetrics Spotlight

The first clue to newly minted Calvin Klein creative director Veronica Leoni’s direction for her debut show? The brand’s original font has returned, embossed on invites and bookending the show notes. The spidery sans serif was a hint that we might be in for an exercise in ’90s minimalism, updated for a nostalgic generation that might not have been there for the first go-round.

That dynamic was also clear in the front row, where new-gen stars like Greta Lee, Eve Hewson, Bad Bunny, and Simone Ashley mingled with OG Calvin muses Kate Moss and Christy Turlington Burns and even the brand founder himself. The fall 2025 show marked not just Leoni’s freshman outing, but the return of Calvin Klein Collection, which has been dormant since 2018. In a post-show interview, Leoni poetically compared it to “a Sleeping Beauty that just wanted to have a kiss.”

And Leoni, who has worked at minimalist standouts like Celine, Jil Sander, and The Row in addition to her own line Quira, was ready to wake things up. She drew on her own impressions of New York and American culture growing up in Italy. “I feel that I knew America before I came to America, in a way, because we grew [up], all of us, with this very fictional image of New York,” she said. She populated her runway version of the city with a mix of characters fictional (Clark Kent) and factual (a taxi driver, a coquettish commuter.)

Leoni was inspired by the idea of “clothes for life, 24/7,” per her show notes. The corpcore moment got a softer translation in grey suiting with rounded shoulders and an ethereal white blazer dress. (Though it looked subdued, the tailoring was, she said, “a very, very sharp chopping exercise.”)

But it wasn’t all work and no play. Leoni was also drawn to the label’s insouciantly sexy DNA (as someone in her early 40s, Leoni likely remembers the Moss and Mark Wahlberg era as well as the Jeremy Allen White one.) A Jessica Rabbit-inspired stage 5 clinger of a dress was a standout. But sex appeal exists “regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin [you show], that kind of stuff, and it’s about the confidence,” she says, adding that some inspiration came from close to home: “My wife is actually the sexiest woman I know.”

Leoni is also the first female designer in the history of Calvin Klein, taking on the post at a time when female creative directors of major brands remain few and far between. She exclusively tells ELLE US, “I feel like King Kong....We need to change the conversation and flip the point of view a little bit.” She particularly enjoyed tackling menswear, she adds. “In doing womenswear, I’m used to knowing what I’m doing because you know how to wear pieces, how you want to look, how you want to feel, and I try stuff for myself. But in menswear you need to find your muses outside of yourself.”

Taking over a brand with so much history can be a tricky proposition, but Leoni found a balance of reverence and reality. “The archive has been a source of energy," she says, but “we really tried not to get stuck in something that was looking too much into the past.” When an archival reference did come into play, it was executed in unexpected ways, like a new take on a squared-off mule from fall 1999 or the iconic CK One perfume bottle she transformed into an gilded evening clutch. When asked what Klein himself thought, Leoni said, “He was happy that he found a new coat to buy.”

Additional reporting by Claire Stern Milch.

This article was first seen on ELLE US.