Inside Veronica Leoni's Buzzy Reinvention of Calvin Klein

Vogue

15 hours ago

On a rainy day in early May, Veronica Leoni, the Roman creative director behind Calvin Klein, is at a fitting for her spring 2026 collection in New York's garment district, where the company has its headquarters. She examines a dress and a trench coat—all the while refining what she calls the transatlantic vision of the new Calvin Klein Collection: combining the 'casual, deconstructed beauty' of Rome with the fast rhythm of New York's streets.
After six years away from the runway, Calvin Klein wants to reclaim its place as the prime mover for contemporary American excellence in minimalist fashion. Enter Leoni, 42, an animated pixie with a sweep of salt-and-pepper hair. When we meet, in a white-walled room next to a bare-bones atelier full of tables with sewing machines and hanging samples, she's wearing a slouchy gray button-down shirt, black drawstring dress pants, and Tabi boots. Tailors and a seamstress are at work as Leoni goes over the garments with her designer and patternmaker.
'My inner trend is actually chaos and disorder,' she says, laughing. 'But I'm beyond a perfectionist—I can see the issue of a pattern from far, and I'm obsessed with 90-degree corners.'
Her debut collection for fall 2025 was one of the most anticipated shows of New York Fashion Week, the first time Calvin Klein had shown there since the label decided to stop producing luxury collections—and parted ways with chief creative officer Raf Simons—in 2018. The house's namesake founder, now in his early 80s, sold the business to fashion conglomerate PVH in 2003, and was back in attendance at Leoni's show, along with other faces from the label's heyday: Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, and the photographer Mario Sorrenti, who shot a teenage Moss, his then girlfriend, for the brand's sultry Obsession campaign in 1993. Leoni's mother flew in from Rome; her younger brother, a butcher, came with his two kids. Greta Lee and Bad Bunny, both of whom have starred in Calvin Klein underwear campaigns, were there as well.
EASY BREEZY
Actor Louisa Jacobson—who can currently be seen in Trophy Boys at the MCC Theater and on the third season of The Gilded Age—wears Calvin Klein Collection.
Photographed by Tess Ayano
When Leoni and Klein met for a coffee the day before the show, 'He said, 'How can you be with me while you've got a show to prep?' ' Leoni recalls. 'I could spend hours and hours with him.' Klein told her that the collection was hers now, and to do what she liked. Leoni says that the only reason she didn't cry was because 'I was too stressed.'
Klein's ex-wife, Kelly Klein, also came to be fitted before the show and seemed to be moved by being back at the headquarters after 20 years away, as was Moss. 'Walking back into the same building where I did my original castings brought back many memories for me,' Moss tells me. 'The doorman, the atelier are still there. Veronica is bringing a fresh energy to the clothes, but you can see she is honoring the timeless minimal chic that Calvin did back in the day.'