EXCLUSIVE: Calvin Klein Taps Veronica Leoni Creative Director of Collection, Signaling a Return to the Runway
After a five-year hiatus, Calvin Klein is getting back into the Collection business.
The company, which is part of PVH Corp., has named Veronica Leoni creative director of Collection, signaling a return to the runway in 2025. The appointment is effective Thursday, and she will begin in September.
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The Collection will include women’s and men’s apparel, underwear and accessories, which will debut with fall 2025.
Leoni, a 2023 LVMH Prize finalist and founder of Quira, has worked for such brands as Jil Sander, Celine, Moncler and most recently The Row, where she was womenswear and menswear design director, in addition to Quira.
In her new role Leoni is expected to merge her deep industry expertise with the modern aesthetic of Calvin Klein, while partnering with Calvin Klein global brand president Eva Serrano to bring inspiration from the Collection to the mainline portfolio and the red carpet.
Leoni will report to Serrano.
Calvin Klein Collection, which had been renamed 205W39NYC, was shuttered in March 2019 following the abrupt departure of former chief creative officer Raf Simons in December 2018.
Serrano believes now is the right time to relaunch Collection, and Leoni is the right person for the job.
“If you met her, you would understand. When I met her and she told me about her story, her experience, how hard she worked, the brands that she contributed to, in that moment, I had the feeling that she had been preparing her whole career for this position,” said Serrano.
She said Calvin Klein is about “all these elements that she touched throughout her career.”
“And her being a woman was also important, and her personality — she’s energetic, but she’s humble too, and her aesthetics are impeccable,” she added.
Leoni’s appointment marks one of the most important steps that Calvin Klein has taken under Serrano’s leadership and represents the first time Calvin Klein Collection has had a female creative director.
“I’m thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to write a new chapter of the Calvin Klein story. For decades, Calvin Klein interpreted the idea of bold self-expression, and I am willing to empower it with a strong accent on style and creativity. I’m deeply thankful to Eva Serrano for her vision and trust,” said Leoni.
“My career has been marked by inspiring encounters with some of the most visionary women in fashion and she is one of them. I also want to thank PVH CEO Stefan Larsson for the amazing opportunity to celebrate one of the most influential brands of American fashion,” Leoni added.
Leoni launched Quira in 2020, which is named after her seamstress grandmother, Quirina. The brand made its debut at Milan Fashion Week in 2021, and garnered more than 20 stockists, including Bergdorf Goodman, H. Lorenzo and Ssense, thanks to its sparse and quiet fare, cut from luxury materials.
WWD reported that its blend of strictness and sensuality mirrored the female-centric approach of her mentors.
According to Larsson, “Eva and her team are already driving some of the highest consumer engagement in Calvin Klein’s history. Veronica’s work will add a next-level aspirational halo for the brand and reinforce the strong foundation already in place toward building Calvin Klein into one of the most desirable lifestyle brands in the world.”
For the past five years, Calvin Klein has functioned without a high-end designer collection or “halo,” following Simons’ bumpy 28-month tenure.
When Simons, who is now co-designer of Prada along with Miuccia Prada, joined Klein in 2016 he immediately set out to rethink the collections, abruptly changing the teams and ad campaigns and basically reinventing the Collection business. The Calvin Klein brand overall was generating some $8 billion in retail sales but had lost its momentum in some respects.
Simons’ directional, often disquieting fashion shows brought the company a lot of buzz, taking the brand in a different direction from the clean, modern, minimalist roots planted by its renowned founder and strengthened by Simons’ predecessor, Francisco Costa. For his work for Calvin Klein, Simons won the CFDA Womenswear and Menswear Designer of the Year in 2017, and the Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2018. PVH had invested as much as $70 million into the Calvin Klein rebrand under Simons, with much of that money going to the Collection, and saw a lack of return on its investment. A month after Simons’ departure over differences in creative vision, the company decided to close its New York Collection flagship at 654 Madison Avenue.
Before Simons’ arrival, Costa had a 13-year tenure as creative director of Calvin Klein Collection’s womenswear line, stepping into a spot vacated by Calvin Klein himself. Costa won the CFDA’s Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2006 and 2008. In April 2016, Klein said that Costa was to exit the brand as part of a new global creative strategy, unifying all Calvin Klein brands under one creative vision. At the same time, Italo Zucchelli, the men’s creative director, left the firm and Ulrich Grimm, global head of non-apparel design who was previously executive vice president, design, shoes and accessories, departed the company in 2020.
Serrano said she’s confident that Leoni’s “purposeful approach to design and work ethic,” combined with their shared values, will enrich the Calvin Klein brand and result in a collection that resonates with consumers around the world.
She said she was introduced to a lot of people in the industry, and when she met Leoni, “I felt this connection with her, and I thought, ‘interesting, let’s keep talking.'”
Asked if it took a long time to put this deal together, Serrano said, “It’s not about the deal. The right moment is the right moment. We are working a lot of angles for the brand, and I felt that when the right moment comes you know, and I feel that now is the right moment.”
Since joining Calvin Klein a little over a year ago, Serrano said her focus has been to have clarity and to execute the PVH+ Plan. “Most important is the product, to be able to strengthen this global product offering, and the marketing, to be able to put into practice these cut-through campaigns that are engaging a lot of people,” she said. She is also reinventing the consumer experience to further amplify the brand. “It’s about the store experience and the e-commerce experience. There was a lot to do. Now is the right moment to do this,” she added.
Serrano said the company plans to have a runway show in 2025, but she didn’t want to be specific as to which season that would be.
“Veronica and I are very aligned in how to bring out the aesthetics in a Calvin way. It’s a partnership. I really want to empower her to bring her impeccable aesthetics to drive the vision for the collection. Our intention is to work very closely with our talented team of leaders of the mainline collection so that we can present a cohesive and aspirational brand,” she said.
The Calvin Klein North American wholesale business, which was licensed to G-III and is returning to PVH, has staggered expirations from 2025 to 2027.
Serrano anticipates the Collection will be distributed in their own premium stores. Recently, they’ve opened stores in Düsseldorf and Rome, and the Milan store has been refurbished. On June 14, Klein will open a store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
“I believe this is a great opportunity for us to present a new concept. For us it has to be a whole experience. We need to create this experience for the consumer.” She said this would be the perfect environment for this new Collection, along with e-commerce.
Serrano said they have a team in place to work with Leoni, and they will add new people as well.
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When asked whether Leoni will continue with her Quira collection, Serrano said, “Right now we are really focused on where we are going to bring Calvin Klein in the future. On this we are very aligned that it has to be our main focus.” Leoni will continue to design Quira as well.
Leoni has been based in Rome, and will divide her time between Rome and New York. “The global hub for the Collection is New York,” said Serrano.
Serrano said Leoni will bring her vision to the Collection campaigns and she will work with its team in marketing led by Jonathan Bottomley.
Serrano said she didn’t want to discuss any lessons they learned from the Raf Simons experience, and how they might do things differently this time. “I have always believed you have to look forward and not backwards. I believe Veronica is going to do amazing things with the Collection and is going to signal an exciting new chapter for the brand.”
In PVH’s most recent earnings report in April, Larsson said that the company had experienced signs of strength in the fourth quarter from both Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. “We delivered the strongest fourth quarter in the history of the company. All-time high earning per share were 50 percent higher than last year,” he said at the time. Calvin Klein showed a 3 percent sales increase overall despite an 8 percent decline in North America that was driven by a decrease in the wholesale business.
Larsson said the Calvin and Tommy brands were both getting more support with the company’s global marketing spend increasing to 6 percent of sales last year, up from about 5 percent in 2022.
That included Calvin’s campaign with Jeremy Allen White that helped boost the brand’s underwear sales by 30 percent in its first week.
“Calvin had a record engagement coming out of 2023 and had the biggest cut-through campaign of any fashion brand starting this year,” said Larsson.
“We continue to elevate online shopping experience and have delivered four consecutive quarters of high quality double-digit growth on CK.com,” said Larsson.
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