Calvin Klein New Collection-Hedonism, Precision, and Power Dressing

Veronica Leoni’s Fall 2026 collection for Calvin Klein balanced sensuality and control, focusing on the body and the house’s history. 

Calvin Klein has always understood the body as a site of power. For Fall 2026, Creative Director Veronica Leoni refined that belief into its sharpest form.

Leoni held her third runway show for the brand at The Shed in Hudson Yards on February 13. A single winding row of orderly red chairs cut through the broad space framed by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the New York City skyline.

The space’s vast backdrop and bare interior set the scene for Leoni’s reductionist agenda: fashion stripped down to its essentials. As Leoni explained, the season was shaped by “a rigorous exploration of shape, craft, and meaningful simplification,” rooted in Calvin Klein’s history of iconography.

Leoni’s notion of hedonism under control is the collection’s main point of tension. It’s an approach she described as a focus on form and the body “to evoke a sense of empowerment and indulgence that is distinctly Calvin Klein.”

Hedonism is found in what’s revealed, while control dictates how it’s revealed. Backless dresses are cut with architectural precision. Bras are occasionally visible, but neither styled for shock nor hidden for modesty. Sleeveless jackets with rigid tailoring expose sculptured shoulders and biceps.

Tension also appears through fabric contrasts. Clean lines discipline, while fluidity indulges. Tailoring wools find ribbed jerseys; liquid velvet and transparent leathers soften the collection’s sharper edges.

The largely neutral palette of black, grey, and beige mirrored the city view. Clementine and soft burgundy appeared in brief, intentional flashes of pleasure.

Denim grounds the collection’s origin story, especially through references to the brand’s 1976 archival denim. The longhand Calvin Klein logo embroidered onto outerwear, including an aviator jacket and a checkered trench, reasserts the authority of the house’s iconography.

Muscle tees, dramatic shoulders, robe-like outerwear, and high-waisted pants nod to the late-70s and early-80s glamor, a time when power dressing and eroticism were in sync. The taller, slimmer silhouettes echo that era’s obsession with perfection. Brooke Shields’ front-row presence made the references feel immediate, placing past and present fashion on equal footing.

Calvin Klein’s Fall 2026 collection sharpens the brand’s identity into something more disciplined and powerful. By tightening her expression of elegance, Leoni reinforces the brand’s belief that the body and precision are enough.

All images courtesy of Calvin Klein.