New York Fashion Week spring 2014: Calvin Klein review

Francisco Costa celebrated 10 years as creative director of Calvin Klein by showing a stellar collection Thursday afternoon at New York Fashion Week to a crowd that included Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara and Naomie Harris.

The look: Modern but not minimalist or severe, thanks to an infusion of color, texture and handcraft. More effortless and cheery than the past few collections.

Key pieces: Sculptural sand-colored canvas jackets, skirts and dresses with ornamental fabric folds and edges wrapping the body. A classic tweed lady suit done Costa’s way, with a lime green Japanese tweed T-shirt, paired with a matching wrap skirt, or a black tweed jacket with multicolored fringe trim at the hem, paired with a pleated tweed skirt. Drop-waist hand-woven tweed sundresses in mixed hues. A multicolored, patched and printed snakeskin strip coat, which had a cool, almost graffitied look to it. Black, white or gray melange-threaded mesh gowns that were raw, abstracted iterations of fringy flapper dresses, and seem destined for the red carpet.

The verdict: Costa proved that in a decade, he has made the brand his own. He’s moved beyond Calvin Klein’s clean minimalism to articulate a vision deeply influenced by modern art and architecture. This collection was almost like a retrospective, in the way that it expressed all of Costa’s design impulses, from sculptural tailoring to innovative fabric engineering. And with rumors of a Calvin Klein store in the works for Los Angeles, the timing couldn’t be better.

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