There was always about Calvin Klein an astonishing convergence of quite seductive impulses. There was the seduction of the conventional; there was the seduction of the idyllic all-American fashion story; there was the seduction of exploring “the masculine, controversial, minimal, simple and direct,” and there was the seduction of the designer’s willingness to test the outer reaches of the ‘underneath’.

A Fashion Institute of Technology graduate who joined Seventh Avenue after his first New York show in April 1970, Calvin Klein’s ability to seduce could have been dismissed as a ‘downtown style,’ yet the brand’s force revealed seasonal campaigns with photographs that reinforced the brand’s breadth.  This force was first felt in 1980, when Richard Avedon was appointed to direct 15-year-old Brooke Shields in a television commercial, promoting the brand’s heritage blue jeans. Under the slogan, “You know what comes between me and my Calvin’s? Nothing”, the campaign pressed the advertising envelope, lending, as Avedon reflected himself, the “Calvin Klein image to jeans and not a jeans image to Calvin Klein.” The campaign, in other words, elevated a utilitarian article of clothing to esteemed heights. 

What was to eventually come between Shield’s and her jeans, was a sum so great that the brand had the financial means to eventually expand. In 1982, notorious American photographer Bruce Weber, was hired for a $500,000 advertising campaign to promote Calvin Klein’s new underwear line. Distinguished by the ‘Calvin Klein’ waistband, each item of underwear sets a gold standard for contemporary interpretations of lingerie. The brand’s campaigns over the next three decades would become synonymous with their status. Featuring Kellan Lutz, Hidetoshi Nakata, Mark Whalberg, Adwoa Aboah, Evan Mock, Sasha Lane, Justice Smith, Kate Moss and TRIBE, these exemplary photographic and video shoots bridged the gap between commercial marketing and art.

In Calvin Klein’s Fall/Winter 2022 campaign, shot by Alasdair McLellan, Chloe Sevigny, Dominic Fike, Jennie, Michaela Jae Rodriguez, Susan Sarandon, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, alongside models Akon Changkou, Efron Danzig, Fran Summers, Kade Holt, Lila Moss, Precious Lee and Rianne Van Rompaey, celebrate the striped-back images for which the brand first became renowned. Straddling between portraiture and promotion, Alasdair McLellan’s photographs capture the legacy initiated by Avedon, Italo Zucchelli, David Sims and Mert and Marcus years ago. As Zuchello did in the early 2000s, McLellan places models in front of minimal backdrops, which, as Pierre Alexandre de Looz writes, “forces the viewer to focus on the clothes and pay attention to the subtle details of gesture.” In a form entirely his own, McLellan uses natural light to extract the humility within each subject. These images, following the Calvin Klein ethos, emphasise the person before the lens. We gaze not only at the heterogeneous clothes worn but rather at the stark presentation of a clothing brand’s heritage sensibility.

New underwear and loungewear styles featured in the campaign include Embossed Icon, which sees Calvin Klein’s signature logo reimagined in a pressed repeated design, and Bonded Flex, which offers wire-free comfort with innovative support. Jennie, Moss and Rodriguez are pictured in the collections’ new cotton bralettes, remodelled from previous triangular silhouettes. The materials used throughout are sustainably sourced and crafted with comfort and style in mind. Denim, on the other hand, channelling the spirit of former times, is elevated with dynamic textures and proportions. Low-waisted and loose-fitting, the jeans follow the brand’s subtle-but-strong design approach, prioritising comfort and ease. With a direct line to the past, the Fall/Winter campaign sustains the tone set decades ago. This campaign is an open testament to the pre-Internet days, the notable sensual minimalism of Klein’s 1990s aesthetic, and the ever-present seduction, which continues to ask us ‘what’s underneath?’

Calvin Klein remains stoic as a brand to follow, experience and enjoy. It is a brand still consumed ubiquitously in contemporary culture, retaining its fixation on authentic products with a lineage to those that came before.

View the full collection over at calvinklein.com