Style
Everything Taken Away, Calvin Klein in a Chelsea Warehouse
Veronica Leoni strips Calvin Klein to bare brick and polished steel in a Chelsea warehouse
The walls are bare brick. The floor is scattered with low shapes of polished steel. At the Calvin Klein show during New York Fashion Week, the sculptures sat so close to the ground that plenty of guests walked straight through them, according to AnOther, until security steered them back out. It was an accidental lesson in the whole idea of the show. Some things are only visible once everything else is gone.
The room was Terminal Warehouse in Chelsea, a brick hulk from 1891 on the far West Side. The steel belonged to Walter De Maria, the American Minimalist behind The New York Earth Room. And the collection belonged to Veronica Leoni, who has spent two years trying to answer a simple question. What does Calvin Klein mean now?
The Discipline of Removal
Leoni joined the house in 2024. The Guardian describes her as an Italian designer with a philosophy degree who trained in the studios of Jil Sander and Celine. Since arriving, she has pulled the brand away from logos, boxer shorts, and billboard denim, and back toward slip dresses, simple coats, slim skirts, and crisp T-shirts. This was her fourth Collection show.
Her statement for the season, quoted by ARTnews, reads like a manifesto. She called American Minimalism "a discipline of removal" and argued that Calvin Klein himself took that idea and aimed it at the body. She wants to aim it at the woman inside the clothes.
Take everything away. What is left is desire.
That line, from the same statement, is the thesis. The show made the case with surprisingly little.
The art was chosen by Antwaun Sargent, a director at Gagosian. He told Wallpaper, as ARTnews reported, that De Maria felt like the natural choice for the warehouse. Sargent chose steel works for the floor, among them Truth / Beauty and a pair of open polygons from 1984. Sargent said the pieces speak to De Maria's love of geometry, repetition, and order, and that their polished surfaces would play off the architecture and the light as the models moved. The soundtrack, produced by Kid Harpoon, featured Laurie Anderson and Solange, Culted reported.
A Check From Georgia O'Keeffe
The clothes followed the same rule. Tailoring comes compact and narrow at the shoulder, cut in cotton or nylon. Trousers sit low on the hip. Slip skirts stop just below the knee, and the best of them, AnOther noted, are in sheer organza worn with flat sandals. A slim three-button suit is meant to move with the ease of a T-shirt. Baseball shirts show up in silk cady with blocks of color. Denim comes washed out, in lean jeans, twisted jackets, and even Bermuda shorts under a clean single-breasted duster.
The palette opens on black and white, then breaks into scarlet, royal blue, bright yellow, cherry, and citron. The quietest reference is also the most American. A check pattern drawn from Georgia O'Keeffe's own wardrobe turns up as a wrap coat with no buttons, no hardware, and only a fabric belt, The Guardian reported. The connection runs deep. Calvin Klein bought O'Keeffe's painting Summer Days in 1983 and later gave it to the Whitney Museum.
One look carries a ghost. An ivory slip dress in crepe-back satin, on a model with her blond hair pulled back by a plain headband, called up Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the former Calvin Klein employee whose style returned to the conversation this year with Ryan Murphy's Love Story.
The most reduced looks are the ones that feel the most like evening.
Built for After Dark
That is the surprise of this collection. Minimalism is usually sold as daywear, all clean desks and morning light. But here it flips. The most reduced looks are the ones that feel the most like evening. AnOther singled out a black suit shorn of its buttons, worn over a crisp white shirt, and a long elderflower satin skirt paired with a white silk-jersey T-shirt for night. Those are clothes for a downtown dinner that runs late, for a room where nobody needs to be told who you are.
The accessories keep the line sharp. Metal headbands and pointed scarves frame the face. Bags come oversized, some structured, some slouchy. A new triangular bag folds into something close to origami.
It is a very old New York idea, dressed for right now. Clean lines, dark rooms, a white shirt doing more work than any sequin. This magazine has made the case for the white shirt as the one piece that never ages, and Leoni seems to agree. Her show proves that a button removed can say more than a logo added.
Not everyone has been convinced by her tenure. AnOther's Alexander Fury wrote that many critics felt the house had been slow to seize its moment, especially with Love Story putting Bessette-Kennedy back on every mood board. This season, he argued, Leoni found her footing. In his words, the collection "not only looked like Calvin, but felt like Calvin."
That may be the real achievement. Calvin Klein was always a brand built on subtraction, on the idea that a New Yorker could walk out at night in almost nothing and still own the room. Leoni took the idea into an old brick warehouse, cleared it out, and set a few pieces of steel on the floor. Then she let the clothes stand in the space that was left.