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Calvin Klein: Grand Hotel Minimalism

Talk about clothes for making a great entrance in some cathedral high atrium of a swish modernist hotel. Nothing better highlighted American fashion’s current thrall with the Thirties than Calvin Klein’s super focused and brilliantly cut collection, all of whose looks would be ideal for Greta Garbo were she around today.

Designers this week in New York have cast their gaze longingly back onto the last era of the grand tour, when foreign travel was exotic and elitist, not the long-distance mass transit of today. But where the response of many was an update of the decorative functionality of Art Deco, designer Francisco Costa has given Calvin Klein’s minimalist traditions a new twist.

The opening gray wool coat on the label’s model ambassador Natalia Vodianova set the tone of unadorned chic, where the fashion was authoritative and assured.

“I wanted womanly, sexy but not too available, a little zipped up,” a smiling Francisco Costa told FWD post show.

Costa’s emphasis was on tailoring throughout – his elongated egg-like silhouette using volume in a credible, exciting way. His layering was also plausible – like adding a cut-off Aran cable sweater over a snug bolero.

Made in the tightest color palette of anthracite, gray, black, dark spinach and ecru marble, the clothes had a sleek technical finish, adding panache.

The models did have some trouble navigating the catwalk on micro-point high heels, the only flaw in a slick production. It finished with a series of exact, trim cocktails embroidered with micro crystals adding just the right dosage of controlled sex appeal.

Backed up by a wonderful extended techno remix of Madonna, the mood soared in Klein’s show space on West 39th Street. We might have been smack in the center of the Garment District but the mood was the opening shot of a remake of "Grand Hotel." Where was John Barrymore to complete the scene?

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