When Eva Serrano arrived at PVH Corporation in 2023, she was given a mission: bring Calvin Klein back to the runway. She chose to accept.
“This is the place Calvin Klein belongs. We have a long history,” says Serrano, the global brand president for Calvin Klein, who spent more than a decade working across Zara and parent company Inditex in Asia prior to joining PVH, where she was recruited by CEO Stefan Larsson. “It was something everyone was waiting for — but we needed to come back at the right moment and give it the right image.”
That moment is now: Calvin Klein’s Autumn/Winter 2025 runway show will be held today (7 February) at 12pm at the brand’s headquarters on West 39th Street in Manhattan. When we speak, it’s the Monday before the show, and Serrano says the energy is palpable in the office. It’s been six and a half years since Calvin Klein’s shown at New York Fashion Week (NYFW) — its last was with Raf Simons in the role of chief creative officer in September 2018 (Simons departed the brand that December).
Anticipation is high. New York embraces its icons, be they Calvin, Tommy, Ralph, Marc, Donna or Diane, yet none show consistently on the NYFW schedule, which lacks recurring anchors and regularly sees promising talent depart for Paris. Many in the New York circuit are looking to Calvin Klein to inject something back into not just the brand, but the local fashion scene.
First, Serrano had to find the right person for the job. She says she had her eye on Italian designer Veronica Leoni, who spent years at brands including Jil Sander, Celine in its Phoebe Philo era and The Row (Simons also spent time at Sander prior to Calvin). She started her own label, Quira, in 2021, putting forward collections of smartly tailored suits, oversized coats, buttoned-up shirts and pleated skirts — encapsulating the modern, minimalist woman echoed by the brands where she got her start, and earning her a spot as an LVMH Prize finalist in 2023.
“I could see that what she was developing was very close to our DNA,” Serrano says. “Then we met, and we had many conversations where we spoke about this DNA translating into current times.” Leoni accepted the job last May – her first time leading a major fashion brand.
All in the DNA
What is that brand DNA? Serrano references it often, making it apparent how important it is that Calvin Klein Collection, the brand’s top-end line of ready-to-wear, hews closely to the rest of the business. Collection hasn’t been seen in some time, spare a few red carpet appearances on the likes of Zendaya, among others (under Simons, it was briefly renamed 205W39NYC after the HQ). As of now, Calvin Klein’s underwear and denim business dominate what we associate with the Calvin Klein name – and primarily underwear, most recently thanks to Jeremy Allen White’s sweaty rooftop campaign last summer.
“For us, it’s very clear. The brand is about empowerment and confidence,” Serrano says. “What does that mean for the consumer now? We want a very consistent message across our product, store experience, marketing — connecting everything to our consumer. It sounds simple, but it’s not.”
What Serrano is describing is perfecting the business flywheel, something every brand must do once it reaches critical mass and has a machine to maintain. In Larsson’s words, it’s about creating “the world’s most desirable lifestyle brand”, meaning people of all ages and income brackets may run into the CK brand, but where you sit in either of those demographics determines what you buy. Collection’s job is to reach the upper echelon, providing a halo effect for the rest of the products, all the way down to the underwear, but without alienating any one group.
“We are a brand for many people. We want to reach many people, and that’s how our distribution is established. We have many categories. And we’ve been taking this DNA and making it current. Starting with emblematic product and making it accessible,” says Serrano. “Collection’s role is a distinctive POV: a strong statement that emboldens [Veronica’s] creativity and will be an aspirational halo across all of our product. It’s a new dimension of desirability for the brand.”
“From the way I see it, [Calvin Klein] is an enormously strong foundation to build on that we will keep growing from,” says Larsson, who joined the company from Ralph Lauren in 2019 as president and became CEO in 2021. Larsson introduced PVH+, the corporate growth plan that stretches across product, consumer interaction, digital marketing, efficiencies and data, in 2022. PVH sales were roughly $9.2 billion in 2023, with Calvin Klein reporting revenues of $3.9 billion, down 3 per cent from the year prior. Along with Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein’s success today relies on wrangling a sprawling, international business that spans categories and price points, with a long list of wholesale outlets, fronted with a designer founder name that’s become eponymous with American lifestyle.
The new Calvin Klein Collection will be prominently featured at the brand’s new flagship stores, which the company is in the process of opening around the world. The first, in Paris, opened last June. The New York SoHo store will open later this year. The stores are the real-life manifestations of the halo that will shine on the rest of the Calvin Klein suite. Leoni’s collection will also be available for sale in certain specialty stores and select wholesale partners, an intentional way to distribute but not dilute the brand’s luxury positioning.
Showtime
What will Leoni’s take on Calvin Klein’s classic American sportswear be? It will span both men’s and womenswear, for one. “We really tried to explore a 24/7 kind of wardrobe,” said Leoni at a preview the day before the show. Her minimalist aesthetic comes up often as indicative of the Calvin Klein brand. The customer is “not someone who uses fashion to communicate who they are”, says Serrano, but “their clothes are an expression of who they are”.
The tailoring on display at Leoni’s Quira brand will also come into play at Calvin. “Tailoring is my high cup of tea, as it was Calvin’s cup of tea,” said Leoni. “But I wanted to find a way of embracing the body a little bit more, and blend the casual – that is very strong in American taste – with the technicality of tailoring.”
It will also mark the first time Calvin Klein has been led by a woman. Serrano says she didn’t consider gender when making the hire, just that she knew that Leoni was the right person for the job. She also doesn’t consider it the beginning of a new Calvin Klein. Klein himself, it’s worth noting, is still in contact with the brand, and Serrano says that the new collection draws on the archives.
“I don’t see it as a reintroduction, I see it as another building block,” says Serrano. “And we’ve built it by being very close with Veronica. We have worked days, nights, evenings, over calls, in meetings where we’ve spoken about, ‘What is Calvin Klein?’ and ‘How can she bring it to this current moment for our customer, both old and new?’”
The two years that Serrano has spent getting to this point has culminated in the past week. In the lead-up to the show, Serrano and Leoni — who is based full time in Italy — worked together out of the New York offices, through the weekends and late nights, doing fittings and stylings, meeting regularly. There’s a job to do, and the show is just one piece of the bigger picture that Serrano set out to complete two years ago. And while there’s pressure riding on its reception, she makes clear that this is not a designer-ocracy.
“[The relationship we have] makes a difference. We don’t always agree and there’s space for debate. That creates growth but the respect for each other — the clarity that, for both of us, the brand comes first. We have that above us. Veronica is important and I might be, but the brand comes first,” she says.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
New York Fashion Week cheat sheet: Autumn/Winter 2025
