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Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Remember this address: 205W39NYC.
Those are the Manhattanite coordinates for Calvin Klein’s Garment District headquarters, the home – since 1970 – of one of the country’s most indelible fashion houses. Today, however, they’re also code for the epicentre of one of the industry’s most notable creative shifts. Since Raf Simons took reins as Chief Creative Officer alongside his collaborator, Creative Director Pieter Mulier, 205W39NYC has taken on a new meaning as the name of the label’s reconfigured ready-to-wear line (formerly Calvin Klein Collection), the debut campaign for which has been released today.
For Autumn 2017, Raf Simons hits a Lynchian lost highway and heads West to the Mojave Desert, where he puts his cerebral stamp on the American dream and the various signifiers that have come to embody it. Or, as the house puts it, its “pageantry and poignancy”, of which plenty is on display here.
Photographed by the inimitable Willy Vanderperre, the campaign acts as an introduction to the freshman class of Simons’s muses: 22 fresh faces, including the designer’s MVP, the Australian model Julia Nobis, who has featured prominently in all things Raf-related since his days at Jil Sander. The campaign’s other star? Its predecessor, the American Classics campaign, which reintroduced the brand and its reimagined stalwart underwear line to audiences earlier this year. Billboards of those images were erected in the Californian dessert in the days prior to the shoot in May, featuring works of art by Andy Warhol (though works by Dan Flavin, Richard Prince and Simons’s friend and frequent collaborator Sterling Ruby starred in the initial campaign).
Focus, however, falls squarely on the collection itself: a melange of the uniforms of modern America, from sheer varsity sweaters and marching band uniforms; to Wild West and Wall Street ready tailoring and outerwear, some sheathed in plastic; and, of course, the acid yellow acrylic fur coat encased in vinyl and belted with a rhinestone metal cord that Nobis wore on the runway.
While a hint of Calvin Klein Collection’s futurism remains in the mix, you sense that Simons remains firmly grounded in his reverence for the label and its history. It’s felt most keenly in the introduction of a new denim line, Calvin Klein Jeans Established 1978, the rear of which eschews a right pocket for an exclusive patch that features a silhouette inspired by the iconic Richard Avedon image taken of the actress and Calvin Klein face Brooke Shields in a denim campaign from 1981. Everything bold is new again.
You can view highlights from the campaign below.
Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Credit: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Tile and cover image: Willy Vanderperre/Courtesy of Calvin Klein
