Veronica Leoni Exits as Calvin Klein Finds Its Shape

Veronica Leoni joined Calvin Klein in May 2024 and became the first woman to lead the house’s Collection line. When her Fall 2025 debut arrived the following February, the expectations extended far beyond a normal creative-director appointment: Calvin Klein had not staged its top-tier runway collection since the end of Raf Simons’s tenure.

Her approach took Calvin’s familiar minimalism somewhere more cerebral and sculptural, informed by a résumé spanning Jil Sander, Céline, Moncler and The Row. The response was uneven. Early collections drew criticism for complicating codes associated with American directness, while her work on the red carpet steadily established a cleaner vocabulary of elongated tailoring, slips and restrained glamour.

That makes Calvin Klein SS27 an unusually bittersweet ending. Shown in New York in September, the collection centred explicitly on American Minimalism, reducing the wardrobe to coats, shirts, narrow tailoring, trousers, pencil skirts and bias-cut slips. Leoni described the process as removing everything until only what was necessary remained.

It was also her strongest-received collection. After seasons of searching, the dialogue between Leoni’s own intelligence and Calvin Klein’s essentialism finally appeared to settle into focus.

Then the experiment stopped. Calvin Klein says Collection will remain central to its long-term strategy, with new creative leadership to be announced. Fashion’s revolving door, meanwhile, had barely started turning that day.

Four seasons revived the runway and left one particularly frustrating question behind: what might another four have looked like for Veronica Leoni?