Calvin Klein (Q1403)
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American fashion house
- Calvin Klein Inc
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Calvin Klein |
American fashion house |
|
Statements
1997
designer
head of womenswear
fabric supplier
2017
creative director
2018
creative officer
2017
Designer
design assistant
2021
senior vice president of design, chief creative officer
2004
illustrator
senior designer for accessories
2000
designer
2019
worked with
intern
designer
designer
1968
designer
1995
2007
freelance printmaking
Visitors to the Calvin Klein 205W39NYC headquarters in Paris enter into a soaring showroom where the central feature is a sculptural Sterling Ruby installation not unlike what he’s created in New York, minus the emphasis on yellow. Architectural with an art-gallery vibe, it’s the type of space that would fascinate design-minded locals who bemoan a dearth of originality in retail despite so much luxury. With the women’s and men’s Pre-Fall offering displayed throughout, the feeling was that this could easily be a beta version of some future Paris boutique.Wishful thinking, perhaps. But the reinvented brand identity that Raf Simons has been developing with each runway show merits wider visibility and reach. This might explain the collection’s more standardized positioning—a wardrobe of “reworked classics”—versus the specific Americana interpretations explored in previous seasons. In lieu of all the familiar quilted looks, there were archive-inspired trenches and coats constructed with offset paneling as if to appear deliberately pieced together. Expertly tailored jackets boasted lapels, collars, and seams that were randomly frayed as a counterintuitive DIY flourish. Get past the velvet pants that pooled gratuitously and there were several enticing jean variations patched from top to bottom with leather, tweed, and corduroy. A draped day-to-night dress in a ribbed cotton velvet stood out for its twisted silhouette.Indeed, twists turned up everywhere. See also the ruched dresses in papery Tyvek material, and lacquered croc and snow leopard coats—faux but decadently so. The collection notes described the eccentric palette as “populist.” Leave it to Simons to translate one of the year’s most zeitgeist-y and controversial terms as a synesthetic statement.Beyond colors, there was much mirroring across the men’s and women’s lineups: the stylized white western boots and the new Shift sneaker with its oversize scored sole; chunky chains that gave a punk feel to sartorial outerwear; large, shapely shearlings; and stand-alone layers that would have otherwise been jacket linings. The ghostly mannequin face beaming forth from the new Dalton bag style showed up on the front of a guy’s T-shirt.If several looks seem steeped in a 1970s influence, as presented in the showroom, the component parts weren’t nearly as time-stamped.
Compared to the ubiquitous prairie dresses, the double-face cashmere coats and drum-shaped bags proved the collection’s hero pieces, mainly because they will be put to use over and over again. This might not be the high-concept Americana we’ve seen from Simons, but there remains something American to such efficiency.
29 November 2018
The Calvin Klein show began just like a movie. The red lights that greeted the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeff Goldblum, and the Houston Rockets’s James Harden on arrival faded to black, and three walls of the ground floor space of 205 West 39th Street crackled to life with an early scene fromJaws, the one where poor Chrissie Watkins goes swimming and doesn’t come out of the water. Film has been a touchstone for Raf Simons since he landed here two years ago. This time he did a deep dive, choosing Steven Spielberg’s 1975 man vs. nature masterpiece (and Hollywood’s first blockbuster), and the Mike Nichols classic of post-adolescent indecision,The Graduate, as reference points.Simons called them “very important movies in my memory.” Explaining his attraction, he said, somewhat convolutedly, “Disasters happen but they turn again into beauty, and beauty is around us and it can oftentimes turn into disaster.” That’s complicated stuff. Indeed over the years,Jawshas been called a critique of capitalism, a post-Watergate parable, and “a ceremony for the restoration of ideological confidence” (America could certainly use some of that). But Simons’s allusions to both movies were quite literal.Jaws’s famous poster was stamped with the “cK” logo and printed on tanks and tees, the latest example of the merch trend that has swept across the upper echelons of fashion. Mortarboards were obvious references toThe Graduate. They seemed more like mood setting than potential hot sellers, though the graduation gowns thrown over models’ shoulders looked compellingly chic. Tailoring is a Simons strong suit.Rubber scuba gear was a through line from one film to the next (Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper wears it to tussle with the Great White, and Dustin Hoffman’s Ben takes it for a dip in the family pool). It featured heavily here, especially on the guys, who wore the torsos peeled off, revealing striped sweaters or bare chests—exposed virility. Afterward Simons said he liked its S&M associations. On his female models, he put flattened, almost two-dimensional 1960s printed cocktail dresses or chunky knits accompanied by pleated skirts with shark-bite cut-outs on one side—vulnerability personified, just like Chrissie Watkins. Man-tailored blazers paired withJaws/“cK” logo tees and wetsuit minis tempered the sweetness. Simons is steeped in the American vernacular. To make his Calvin Klein masterpiece, he’ll have to become his own auteur.
12 September 2018
The Calvin Klein show began just like a movie. The red lights that greeted the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeff Goldblum, and the Houston Rockets’s James Harden on arrival faded to black, and three walls of the ground floor space of 205 West 39th Street crackled to life with an early scene fromJaws, the one where poor Chrissie Watkins goes swimming and doesn’t come out of the water. Film has been a touchstone for Raf Simons since he landed here two years ago. This time he did a deep dive, choosing Steven Spielberg’s 1975 man vs. nature masterpiece (and Hollywood’s first blockbuster), and the Mike Nichols classic of post-adolescent indecision,The Graduate, as reference points.Simons called them “very important movies in my memory.” Explaining his attraction, he said, somewhat convolutedly, “Disasters happen but they turn again into beauty, and beauty is around us and it can oftentimes turn into disaster.” That’s complicated stuff. Indeed over the years,Jawshas been called a critique of capitalism, a post-Watergate parable, and “a ceremony for the restoration of ideological confidence” (America could certainly use some of that). But Simons’s allusions to both movies were quite literal.Jaws’s famous poster was stamped with the “cK” logo and printed on tanks and tees, the latest example of the merch trend that has swept across the upper echelons of fashion. Mortarboards were obvious references toThe Graduate. They seemed more like mood setting than potential hot sellers, though the graduation gowns thrown over models’ shoulders looked compellingly chic. Tailoring is a Simons strong suit.Rubber scuba gear was a through line from one film to the next (Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper wears it to tussle with the Great White, and Dustin Hoffman’s Ben takes it for a dip in the family pool). It featured heavily here, especially on the guys, who wore the torsos peeled off, revealing striped sweaters or bare chests—exposed virility. Afterward Simons said he liked its S&M associations. On his female models, he put flattened, almost two-dimensional 1960s printed cocktail dresses or chunky knits accompanied by pleated skirts with shark-bite cut-outs on one side—vulnerability personified, just like Chrissie Watkins. Man-tailored blazers paired withJaws/“cK” logo tees and wetsuit minis tempered the sweetness. Simons is steeped in the American vernacular. To make his Calvin Klein masterpiece, he’ll have to become his own auteur.
12 September 2018
Since arriving at Calvin Klein, Raf Simons has put the label’s stamp, 205W39NYC, on various bits of Americana. Now, what he’s done for quilts, cowboy boots, and band uniforms, he’s about to do for Yale and Berkeley. The universities’ logos turned up on modified sweatshirts and oversize varsity jackets, as well as on leather handbags, and their crests were embroidered on the breast pockets of collegiate stripe blazers. The school choices would appear to be arbitrary, except for the fact of the synergy between Calvin and the University of California, which was shortened to “Cal” on a hand-knit sweater (one of many in a strong offering) that also featured the Berkeley Bear.Cobranding of this sort has become a mini-phenomenon—see Gucci’s Major League Baseball arrangement—but it is a bit lost on this reviewer. More compelling were Simons’s other explorations around American youth culture. Tie-dye tank tops and jeans and outerwear made from reproductions of old-fashioned sleeping bags had a hand-crafted appeal, as did the denim, which incorporated different washes, as well as the reflective safety stripes of Fall’s fireman coats.Side by side with these earthier, almost DIY elements were couture-like silhouettes. Long satin skirts with bubble-like waists were paired with the tie-dye tanks in a way that will look familiar to longtime Simons watchers (a certain Jil Sander collection seared into all of our brains). He’s also elongated the turtlenecks that have been integral to his work at Calvin into graceful, to-the-ankle evening dresses in brightly colored virgin wool.On the accessories front, Simons has morphed baseballs and footballs and basketballs into heels and totes. If compelled to choose a league I’d go with the NBA. But a vampy black pump traced with snaps and sold with adjustable straps said 205W39NYC better than any of those sports references.
3 July 2018
Just when you thought New York Fashion Week might go out with a whimper, along came Raf Simons. Team Calvin Klein took the American Stock Exchange (a loaded location made all the more so by the market’s recent high-volume churning) and transformed it into a hallucinatory farm scene, complete with barn simulacra covered in Andy Warhol photographs, Sterling Ruby sculptures hanging from the scaffolding, and popcorn half a foot deep. The relevance and value of fashion shows may be in question, but it’s an undeniable buzz to attend one by a brand that has money to spend on it, and the creative wherewithal to match.This was Simons’s third runway show for Calvin Klein, and his most fully realized. It made the previous two look like that metal scaffolding—a solid framework, but spare in comparison. A year after his debut, Simons has much more to say, starting with a whole lot about protection and safety. He showed all manner of firemen’s jackets for men and women, including one that integrated the reflective stripes into shearling, and he turned Mylar survival blankets into open-back dresses trimmed in white lace. Coupled with rubber hazmat boots that reached the thighs, and hand-knit balaclavas, it painted a dystopian picture. Afterward, Simons mentioned as an influenceSafe, the prescient 1995 Todd Haynes film, in which Julianne Moore’s California housewife suffers unnamed environmental illnesses. It was tempting to see the darkness here—and by extension, in America—but Simons dismissed the idea: “Less horror this time, more hope.”Where was the hope? In the delicately bold patchwork chiffon gowns (up until now Simons hasn’t done unabashedly pretty), and in the 19th-century dresses cut from the sheerest of pastel plaids, or deconstructed at the yoke to expose the underpart or all of the breasts. They conjured thoughts of Rudi Gernreich’s monokini. Most compelling of all from a shopper’s perspective will be the floor-sweeping prairie skirts, which Simons paired with chunky sweaters and oversize, mannish coats, plus elbow-length silver gloves for a cool, modern look.Many of the models clutched paper bags of popcorn to their chests, the bags advertising Calvin Klein, just like they might be selling product X, Y, or Z at your local AMC. Extending the metaphor, the acres of popcorn at our feet represented not just the prairie heartland, but also the movies, the connective tissue in a country where the metaphorical center and the coasts seem hopelessly divided.
All this to say, Raf got conceptual here, and that got us thinking. Really thinking, in ways that happened all too rarely, given the state of things, this New York Fashion Week.
14 February 2018
Just when you thought New York Fashion Week might go out with a whimper, along came Raf Simons. Team Calvin Klein took the American Stock Exchange (a loaded location made all the more so by the market’s recent high-volume churning) and transformed it into a hallucinatory farm scene, complete with barn simulacra covered in Andy Warhol photographs, Sterling Ruby sculptures hanging from the scaffolding, and popcorn half a foot deep. The relevance and value of fashion shows may be in question, but it’s an undeniable buzz to attend one by a brand that has money to spend on it, and the creative wherewithal to match.This was Simons’s third runway show for Calvin Klein, and his most fully realized. It made the previous two look like that metal scaffolding—a solid framework, but spare in comparison. A year after his debut, Simons has much more to say, starting with a whole lot about protection and safety. He showed all manner of firemen’s jackets for men and women, including one that integrated the reflective stripes into shearling, and he turned Mylar survival blankets into open-back dresses trimmed in white lace. Coupled with rubber hazmat boots that reached the thighs, and hand-knit balaclavas, it painted a dystopian picture. Afterward, Simons mentioned as an influenceSafe, the prescient 1995 Todd Haynes film, in which Julianne Moore’s California housewife suffers unnamed environmental illnesses. It was tempting to see the darkness here—and by extension, in America—but Simons dismissed the idea: “Less horror this time, more hope.”Where was the hope? In the delicately bold patchwork chiffon gowns (up until now Simons hasn’t done unabashedly pretty), and in the 19th-century dresses cut from the sheerest of pastel plaids, or deconstructed at the yoke to expose the underpart or all of the breasts. They conjured thoughts of Rudi Gernreich’s monokini. Most compelling of all from a shopper’s perspective will be the floor-sweeping prairie skirts, which Simons paired with chunky sweaters and oversize, mannish coats, plus elbow-length silver gloves for a cool, modern look.Many of the models clutched paper bags of popcorn to their chests, the bags advertising Calvin Klein, just like they might be selling product X, Y, or Z at your local AMC. Extending the metaphor, the acres of popcorn at our feet represented not just the prairie heartland, but also the movies, the connective tissue in a country where the metaphorical center and the coasts seem hopelessly divided.
All this to say, Raf got conceptual here, and that got us thinking. Really thinking, in ways that happened all too rarely, given the state of things, this New York Fashion Week.
14 February 2018
Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein experiment is an American experiment. Last season he identified classic tropes—diner uniforms; cowboy boots; denim, of course. For Spring, he added layers. The new motifs included Andy Warhol prints of Dennis Hopper circaEasy Riderand a 1971 Sandra Brant (is there an art movement more American than Pop?), cheerleaders, and horror movies. His Hitchcock blondes wore rubber, and gauzy nightgowns conjured Sissy Spacek inCarrie. Above the runway, Sterling Ruby installed gleaming metal buckets not unlike the one in that movie’s pivotal prom scene. Simons and his creative director and fellow Belgian, Pieter Mulier, landed stateside a year ago. Whatever or whoever could be making them think so sinisterly?Simons said he’s attracted to film and TV (Game of Thronesis a current obsession), the reason being that he sees in the medium’s auteurs a sense of freedom that our industry currently lacks. “Fashion,” he said, “has embraced too much the spectators’ expectations.” He may be giving Hollywood too much credit—ticket sales are down, there’s a glut of superhero sequels, blah blah blah—but he has a point about fashion. There isn’t enough risk. Simons’s project here, then, was embracing that risk, and doing the weird thing, maybe even the wrong thing. Even with their Warhol prints, those sheer nightgowns don’t exactly spell summer blockbuster. Neither do the Hitchcock blondes’ rubber separates. But Simons gets credit for provocation.The crowd was pumped. Sexy 8:00 p.m. time slot. VVIPs lined up by the dozen in the front row, with best actor Mahershala Ali and girl-of-the-moment Millie Bobby Brown among them. A new installation by Sterling Ruby featuring giant pom-poms and straight out ofThe Shining’s “Here’s Johnny” scene axes. It isn’t often that you can feel the anticipation at a show—actually sense it in the audience’s body language—but you could at 205 West 39th Street tonight.“American horror, American dreams,” Simons elaborated. Where there is darkness, there is also light. Lightness he evoked with 1950s couture silhouettes (also American, according to the show notes) rendered in the unlikeliest of materials: waterproof nylon used for tents. The trio of dresses in the stuff that came midway through the show actually did look like commercial hits in the making. Two seasons in, America is proving fertile territory for Simons, even if the country is living through its own very real horror story.
8 September 2017
Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein experiment is an American experiment. Last season he identified classic tropes—diner uniforms; cowboy boots; denim, of course. For Spring, he added layers. The new motifs included Andy Warhol prints of Dennis Hopper circaEasy Riderand a 1971 Sandra Brant (is there an art movement more American than Pop?), cheerleaders, and horror movies. His Hitchcock blondes wore rubber, and gauzy nightgowns conjured Sissy Spacek inCarrie. Above the runway, Sterling Ruby installed gleaming metal buckets not unlike the one in that movie’s pivotal prom scene. Simons and his creative director and fellow Belgian, Pieter Mulier, landed stateside a year ago. Whatever or whoever could be making them think so sinisterly?Simons said he’s attracted to film and TV (Game of Thronesis a current obsession), the reason being that he sees in the medium’s auteurs a sense of freedom that our industry currently lacks. “Fashion,” he said, “has embraced too much the spectators’ expectations.” He may be giving Hollywood too much credit—ticket sales are down, there’s a glut of superhero sequels, blah blah blah—but he has a point about fashion. There isn’t enough risk. Simons’s project here, then, was embracing that risk, and doing the weird thing, maybe even the wrong thing. Even with their Warhol prints, those sheer nightgowns don’t exactly spell summer blockbuster. Neither do the Hitchcock blondes’ rubber separates. But Simons gets credit for provocation.The crowd was pumped. Sexy 8:00 p.m. time slot. VVIPs lined up by the dozen in the front row, with best actor Mahershala Ali and girl-of-the-moment Millie Bobby Brown among them. A new installation by Sterling Ruby featuring giant pom-poms and straight out ofThe Shining’s “Here’s Johnny” scene axes. It isn’t often that you can feel the anticipation at a show—actually sense it in the audience’s body language—but you could at 205 West 39th Street tonight.“American horror, American dreams,” Simons elaborated. Where there is darkness, there is also light. Lightness he evoked with 1950s couture silhouettes (also American, according to the show notes) rendered in the unlikeliest of materials: waterproof nylon used for tents. The trio of dresses in the stuff that came midway through the show actually did look like commercial hits in the making. Two seasons in, America is proving fertile territory for Simons, even if the country is living through its own very real horror story.
8 September 2017
After months of buildup and weeks of teasing what his Calvin Klein will look like via advertising campaigns and a newly created couture-ishcollection called By Appointment, Raf Simons made his debut this morning on the ground floor of the company’s 39th Street headquarters before a small crowd of fashion insiders and a glittering group of celebrities. Brooke “nothing comes between me and my Calvins” Shields was in a mix that included Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, A$AP Rocky, Naomie Harris, and the young stars ofMoonlight. Millie Bobby Brown, a new face of Calvin, also sat front row.Simons has a lot going for him: 20-plus years’ experience designing arguably the most influential men’s label around (see: Off-White, et al.), and a pristine womenswear CV that includes Jil Sander and Christian Dior, sui generis pioneers of their day whose oeuvres he studied and approached with huge respect. But what stands out as his unique selling proposition and what puts him in a class almost all his own—he has been heralded as the savior of American fashion, a more pressing assignment than ever, given the imminent exodus of Proenza Schouler and Rodarte for Paris—is Simons’s earnest sincerity. It’s what brought the show “home” to 39th Street, rather than a Chelsea gallery; it’s what prompted him to add “Established 1968” on the show’s invitations; and it’s why he had tears in his eyes, as he has so often in the past, as he took his runway bow with his right-hand man and creative director Pieter Mulier. His sincerity has endeared him to a crowd more familiar with froideur.Fashion has lately witnessed many a house revival with such mixed results that the rule book has all but exploded. Arguably the most successful creative director of recent years—Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent—was a disruptor, not a reverer. “What will Raf do?” has been the refrain since he signed on the dotted line last August. The house of Calvin has its own codes: primarily American minimalism and a provocative sort of sensuality (with the sensuality bit being the harder element to nail for Simons’s predecessor, Francisco Costa). Simons clarified his own approach in the program notes: “You are sat in an artwork by Sterling Ruby . . . . It is part of Simons’s curatorial approach to the brand.”
13 February 2017
After months of buildup and weeks of teasing what his Calvin Klein will look like via advertising campaigns and a newly created couture-ishcollection called By Appointment, Raf Simons made his debut this morning on the ground floor of the company’s 39th Street headquarters before a small crowd of fashion insiders and a glittering group of celebrities. Brooke “nothing comes between me and my Calvins” Shields was in a mix that included Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, A$AP Rocky, Naomie Harris, and the young stars ofMoonlight. Millie Bobby Brown, a new face of Calvin, also sat front row.Simons has a lot going for him: 20-plus years’ experience designing arguably the most influential men’s label around (see: Off-White, et al.), and a pristine womenswear CV that includes Jil Sander and Christian Dior, sui generis pioneers of their day whose oeuvres he studied and approached with huge respect. But what stands out as his unique selling proposition and what puts him in a class almost all his own—he has been heralded as the savior of American fashion, a more pressing assignment than ever, given the imminent exodus of Proenza Schouler and Rodarte for Paris—is Simons’s earnest sincerity. It’s what brought the show “home” to 39th Street, rather than a Chelsea gallery; it’s what prompted him to add “Established 1968” on the show’s invitations; and it’s why he had tears in his eyes, as he has so often in the past, as he took his runway bow with his right-hand man and creative director Pieter Mulier. His sincerity has endeared him to a crowd more familiar with froideur.Fashion has lately witnessed many a house revival with such mixed results that the rule book has all but exploded. Arguably the most successful creative director of recent years—Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent—was a disruptor, not a reverer. “What will Raf do?” has been the refrain since he signed on the dotted line last August. The house of Calvin has its own codes: primarily American minimalism and a provocative sort of sensuality (with the sensuality bit being the harder element to nail for Simons’s predecessor, Francisco Costa). Simons clarified his own approach in the program notes: “You are sat in an artwork by Sterling Ruby . . . . It is part of Simons’s curatorial approach to the brand.”
13 February 2017