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Veronica Leoni, for her third collection for Calvin Klein, spoke of “the cult of the body” and wanting to explore the “hedonistic elegance” she found while researching Klein’s fashion of the late seventies and early eighties, adding that she wanted to go beyond the “stereotype of Calvin.”
There are so many images of the brand, shaped as much by the founder’s ideas and his groundbreaking ads as by the work of a successor, Raf Simons and his creative team, which included Pieter Mulier, Matthieu Blazy and the artist Sterling Ruby. And it’s Leoni’s job to sort through those images and find a clear path forward—that is, if the company is serious about advancing its collection line. (It paused after Simons’ departure.)
But Leoni is not up to the task, judging by her latest effort—on Friday, on a circular runway in the glass cube of the Shed at Hudson Yards. She makes things overly complicated. She can’t lay down a look that excites, mostly because she’s putting out many, many looks. She showed a sleeveless suit for men and women, slim in cut, but then she also had some rather blocky shapes, including one with drain-pipe sleeves extending well past the hands, and others that were open and lightly laced in the back.
She can’t leave well enough alone. A nice, tough-looking work jacket in cocoa brown, worn with jeans, gets lumped with a thick collar of mottled red shearling that forms a V down the back, like a relic from Jon Snow’s wardrobe. A similar flap weighs down the look of other coats. Nor is Leoni convincing about her notion of “the cult of the body.” I can’t believe there are many who would want to join this cult. A plain pair of sack dresses, one in orange, another in light gray, looked fussed over and tweaked—to little benefit. (They also resembled a style that Prada did a year ago.) I get the sense that much of Leoni’s understanding of Calvin and American fashion is based on abstractions. Unfortunately, that’s where the results remain stuck.
It’s curious how many designers want to not merely cover up the body but completely drown it. That decision now feels out of step, especially after seeing Marc Jacobs’ pared-down clothes this week and the Prada men’s collection in January, in which the silhouette was generally long and lean.
Although Maria McManus, who presented her small collection in a gallery, likes a bit of volume—at least in a fantastic palomino coat of sheared recycled poly—her cuts have a natural, uncomplicated regard for the body.
She told me that pattern-making is her biggest expense, and that shows in the thoughtful cut of her clothes, like a neat jacket in a black nubby tweed that kicks out a little in the back and goes with a pencil skirt finished at the waist with insets of blackand python-embossed leather. She used the same python leather—from a roll of dead stock—for a pencil skirt worn with a clingy mock turtleneck. The collection has a lovely, subtle sense of the designer’s native Ireland, notably in Aran sweaters (made from soft Italian yarns) and a hairy v-neck sweater in mist gray. I’m not sure which continent a pair of flannel trousers layered with a half wrap skirt lands on, but it’s a great look that feels new.
Sergio Hudson closed his show on Friday night with Aretha Franklin’s 1998 performance of “Nessun Dorma,” from the operaTurandot.The designer is marking his 10th anniversary, so a little grandeur was in order. Though some of the models had trouble slowing their walk to the prescribed salon-style pace, it didn’t really matter. The clothes—the many well-cut pantsuits and fitted dresses in graphic patterns or rich colors like deep raspberry—did the talking. It was a stellar display of Hudson’s brand of glamour.
Curiously, Whit Stillman’s movieMetropolitan,from 1990, about a group of young New York socialites during deb season, is on people’s minds this week. Frances Howie, the designer of Fforme, mentioned it. So did Nicholas Aburn of Area. “There’s a kind of Upper East Side undercurrent through the collection,” Aburn told me. And though he wasn’t thinking ofMetropolitan,the brand’s social media team read the clothes in that context and posted related images.
Aburn, who spent three years working for Demna at Balenciaga couture before he joined Area in 2025, and I were standing backstage before the show, looking at a model in a long skirt fashioned as a deconstructed black hoodie and worn with a fitted black velvet top. Another model walked by in a short version of the twisted black sweatshirt dress. Aburn remarked that they were the sort of looks that Carolyn Bassette Kennedy would have worn. I laughed and agreed. They had an offhandedness that felt New York—mixed, perhaps, with early Yohji Yamamoto. (Or, so it seemed to me.)
Those sweatshirt styles, along with the opening dark denim looks also represented a big improvement over Aburn’s debut show last fall. The collection was just clearer in its intentions, its street smarts and its burst of night-time flamboyance more believable. One black lace dress was embroidered with the filmy tape pulled out of cassettes—though you’d never know from the expert finishing. It was shown with a black leather blouson that snaps in the back to create a kind of peplum; unsnapped, it becomes a regular jacket. Also clever were a pair of black evening looks with a dirty white feathery trim. The “feathers” are shredded t-shirts.
I loved a lot of Howie’s collection for Fforme, and her idea of exploring an American style as it was once practiced in the better workrooms of Seventh Avenue. She also brings a relevant Margiela anti-luxury flavor to her clothes and the styling, notably with its blunt line and a few shearling trapper hats. (Margiela images were on her mood board.) In addition to dark wool for her expert tailoring, Howie worked with a gorgeous French panne velvet for a coat and a trouser suit, and, as well, black hair calf for a long, loose coat.
But some of her shapes swallow the body, and I didn’t understand why she showed many of her outfits without shoes, the models in their stocking feet. She also needs to bring her audience closer to the clothes, which are minimalist. Howie has a lot to say about modern dress but it’s getting lost in the circumstances.
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