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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Get the models to hair and makeup 'cause New York Fashion Week starts this week. And one of America's most iconic fashion brands is trying to stage a comeback of sorts. Calvin Klein, famous for simple sexy lines and standout red carpet looks, returns to the runway with its first high-end collection since 2018. To find out more, Washington Post fashion critic Rachel Tashjian joins us from New York. Welcome.
RACHEL TASHJIAN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: So what made Calvin Klein so special in its heyday? I definitely remember, you know, those '90s underwear ad campaigns with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss. And it was in "Back To The Future," wasn't it? You know, Calvin Klein?
TASHJIAN: Yeah. I mean, I think you could say that it was the first kind of pop cultural fashion brand in that way, right? I mean, you think about those iconic photographs in the 1990s of Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss and the underwear ads and, of course, the cologne, which was the first unisex perfume that was, I believe, ever on the market. And it really ingratiated itself in popular culture in the way that pop music or cinema does.
RASCOE: So what happened? Like, was the brand just not cool anymore? You attended that last New York Fashion Week that Calvin Klein did back in 2018.
TASHJIAN: Yeah. Well, you know, it's really hard for a brand to be cool. And it actually was really cool the last time, you know, that we saw it showing at New York Fashion Week. And that was a moment where, you know, you had the first lady, Melania Trump, wearing a lot of these Calvin Klein designs. A lot of celebrities were wearing them. It was a very exciting brand. But the relationship between the designer, who was then Raf Simons, and the corporation of Calvin Klein didn't work out. And, you know, it's really hard to find a great designer who has the oomph and the charisma to reinvigorate a brand like this. And it's just taken this long, I think, for them to find the right person.
RASCOE: Is that what it's all about? Is the return now because they have a new creative direction under this new head designer?
TASHJIAN: That's exactly correct. So they have a wonderful new designer named Veronica Leoni, who, in fact, is an Italian woman. And she comes with a lot of experience from these high-end European brands like Celine and Jil Sander and The Row. And I think the interesting thing about her background and about what Calvin Klein, I think, is hoping to do this week is that these are going to be - very likely - very expensive clothes.
And it will be interesting to see on the runway something that might be, I would estimate, you know, a $3,000 coat. How is that going to resonate with the consumer who's aware of, for example, Jeremy Allen White, the star of "The Bear," who was posing in his underwear on a couch for Calvin Klein, or K-pop stars who are wearing Calvin Klein? So it will be interesting to see how those two things are reconciled.
RASCOE: Will these efforts to kind of reinvigorate the high fashion part of the brand - will it filter down to us, to the regular folks who shop at Macy's and JCPenney?
TASHJIAN: Right. I mean, this is the question I always have as a critic. The fashion industry spends several weeks a year looking at these incredibly expensive clothes, but how does that come back to the relevance of the life of the everyday person? And I think Calvin Klein, again, is a brand that has managed to do this in the past with creating these really powerful and exciting images and working with really interesting supermodels who are almost like celebrities. And putting out accessible products like the underwear, even the bedsheets, you know, the cologne, the makeup...
RASCOE: And the purses - we definitely had Calvin Klein purses.
TASHJIAN: Exactly. So I think the hope is that this super high-end exercise in marketing will, in fact, sort of reverberate down into the other products that you and I might be more likely to buy.
RASCOE: Do you have any sense of whether it will be successful?
TASHJIAN: It's impossible to say. And this is the excitement of fashion, you know? You never know until you actually see the runway show. But there's a lot of hope and a lot of enthusiasm for this because American fashion has a lot of these iconic brand names, you know, like Calvin Klein, and I think it's a fantastic opportunity. And we have a wonderful woman designer, and it's always great to see a woman designing for other women.
RASCOE: That's Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic for the Washington Post. Happy fashion week. And thank you.
TASHJIAN: Thank you so much.
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