From underwear to the runway: How Calvin Klein is back on top

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After a series of false starts, Calvin Klein has become the hottest show of New York Fashion Week, more than 20 years after its founder took his final bow as designer.

Naomi Watts wearing socks and heels, Lily Collins, BTS performer Jungkook and Louisa Jacobson of The Gilded Age, unrecognisable unstrapped from her corset and nibbling a toothpick, gathered for Italian designer Veronica Leoni’s second show as creative director of the iconic brand.

Naomi Watts at the Calvin Klein show for New York Fashion Week.

Receiving one of the loudest cheers from the crowd lining the street outside the Brant Foundation, only a few blocks from the brand’s home on 39th Street, was singer Rosalia. The Spanish pop and flamenco singer this week followed her ex-boyfriend Jeremy Allen White from The Bear to the underwear drawer, appearing in steamy Calvin Klein advertisements.

The celebrities, divided across two rooms, were treated to elongated trench coats, robe dresses, extravagant fringes and key pieces that were unmistakably Calvin Klein, to a soundtrack peppered with Kylie Minogue tracks from music producer Kid Harpoon.

Severe white sheath dresses with the straightest of spaghetti straps captured the minimalist spirit of former Calvin Klein employee Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy more successfully than the producers of the upcoming series on her life with John F. Kennedy Jr, judging from on-set photographs.

Spanish singer Rosalia at the Calvin Klein show.

The week’s emerging key trend of pompom accessories was ticked off, but a blonde male model in pale double denim and a female in long underwear layered over underpants with a familiar waistband made it clear that Leoni is celebrating the brand as much as the season.

While Leoni’s predecessors in Klein’s chair, including Raf Simons and Francisco Costa, distanced themselves from the brand’s vision with their deeply personal aesthetics, she is embracing them.

Like a 15-year-old Brooke Shields announced in the infamous Calvin Klein television commercial from 1980, nothing will come between Leoni and her Calvins.

To drive the point home, a model emerged in a dress resembling tweed, until closer inspection revealed it was constructed from woven underwear waistbands.

A dress made from underwear waistbands at the Calvin Klein spring 2026 show.

“Underwear becomes a protagonist, its presence persisting in variations on the camisole and the slip; in lace details that pop up; exploding in the iconic logoed elastic bands that flash at the waist,” explained Leoni’s show notes, deposited on each seat. “The sense of intimacy meets a taste for exposure.”

A classic Calvin Klein double denim pairing at New York Fashion Week.

Watts’ 16-year-old daughter, Kai Schreiber, wore a simple belted black dress on the runway, with a headscarf that offered a touch of trad wife.

Kai Schreiber, the daughter of Naomi Watts, on the runway for Calvin Klein at New York Fashion Week

Australian Julia Nobis, who booked an exclusive appearance with Calvin Klein in 2010 when she was 17, wore a beige skirt suit with a generously scooped neckline.

There were enough bursts of colour to satisfy the global head of Vogue, Anna Wintour, who sat beside the new content editor of the magazine’s US edition, Chloe Malle.

Apple green wrap tops, cropped pink pants with exaggerated cuffs, and traffic-light red men’s trousers enlivened the calm procession of white, black, grey and beige.

Veronica Leoni has reignited the brand’s creative fire.

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