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Veronica Leoni’s tenure at Calvin Klein has come to a close.
The PVH-owned brand announced on Thursday that Leoni, a veteran designer of The Row and Phoebe Philo’s Celine, would be leaving the label after four seasons. Leoni presented her last runway collection for Calvin Klein Collection at New York Fashion Week in early September.
“Veronica’s exceptional talent and fresh perspective on Calvin’s iconic design codes helped build meaningful momentum,” David Savman, global brand president at Calvin Klein, said in a statement. He added that Leoni helped build “cultural moments” for the brand and conversation around its runway shows.
The move is something of an about-face from last month, when Savman indicated that the brand was willing to be patient in seeing Leoni’s vision through. In a statement to The Business of Fashion, he said “reestablishing Collection is something we have approached with a long-term view, and we are seeing great progress.”
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Though there were certainly high points during Leoni’s time at Calvin Klein, from red carpet placements on talent like “Love Story” star Sarah Pigeon at the Vanity Fair Oscar party and “Severance” actress Britt Lower the night she won an Emmy, to delivering talked-about runway shows that generated the most MIV (media impact value) of all of New York Fashion Week for her first three seasons. The feedback to the clothes, however, was more mixed, though her most recent outing was largely well-received by critics.
Calvin Klein has had trouble finding its footing on its higher-end line over the last decade. After its last creative director, Raf Simons, exited in December 2018 (also after four seasons), parent company PVH shuttered the line entirely. Leoni’s appointment in May 2024 marked its return after that six-year hiatus, this time under the new moniker Calvin Klein Collection. It came at a seemingly fitting moment in the zeitgeist, as minimal fashion was seeing a swell of interest thanks to the “quiet luxury” craze that was propelling labels like The Row and Loro Piana. Calvin Klein the designer, after all, was the original 1990s minimalist.
But Calvin Klein the brand hasn’t been able to capture much of that attention for itself. By the time Leoni’s first collection became available to purchase, the peak of “quiet luxury” had long passed. The brand was granted unexpected stature in the zeitgeist with the premiere of the TV series “Love Story, ”which chronicled the ill-fated romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, who worked as a publicist for the brand, earlier this year.
The association led to a sales bump but observers said the brand ultimately fell short of fully taking advantage of the momentum. Calvin Klein managed to release a “Made in the ‘90s” digital campaign before the series wrapped, but missed the beginning of the Carolyn Bessette frenzy in fashion. The corresponding edit did not contain any pieces from Leoni’s Collection.
Even its win in dressing Pidgeon for the Vanity Fair party came with an asterisk, as the show had already been on the air for nearly two months at that point.
So far, Collection has not appeared to make a major commercial difference to the overall Calvin Klein business. Quarterly sales at the brand fell 7 percent in its latest earnings report, and Collection’s only mention was a reminder of the upcoming show. There has been little effort on the brand’s part to market Collection beyond the runway and red carpet; the sole Collection-specific campaign that ran during Leoni’s tenure was photographed backstage at the brand’s show.
Calvin Klein’s runway line was always likely intended to be more of a halo builder than a sales driver, but even so, a successful premium label should yield some commercial result. Still, the brand hasn’t given up on Collection’s potential just yet: the company confirmed that Leoni’s departure does not mean the end of Collection in its current form, calling it “an important part of Calvin Klein’s long-term strategy and the pinnacle expression of the brand.”
A new creative director will be named “in due course,” it said.
