The Calvin Klein Look That Ruled the 1990s

When United States entered an economic recession in 1990, the glittering, shoulder-padded excess of the ’80s quickly felt outdated. Designer Calvin Klein offered a reset. 

Already a household name—thanks to his denim, the infamous 1980 Brooke Shields ad (“You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”) and his best-selling Obsession perfume—Klein’s quieter, cleaner aesthetic helped set a new fashion mood.

“Calvin Klein’s era of minimalism was a sign of the times,” says Lisa Marsh, author of The House of Klein: Fashion, Controversy, and a Business Obsession. “History remembers this era as one that is an antidote to ’80s maximalism. No one will ever don a simple slip dress without, consciously or unconsciously, saying a little thank you to Calvin Klein.”

Minimalism wasn’t new to fashion, but Klein’s version was distinctly American—featuring clean silhouettes, body-skimming bias cuts, tailored coats and monochrome palettes.

“Calvin Klein had an innate ability to see what was coming,” Marsh says. “Remember, he was part of the wave of the first big-name fashion designers. He lived through the disco ’70s, which were over the top. He lived through the excesses of the 1980s: Which was bigger—your hair or your bubble skirt? He was probably the first to see that change was needed. Just like he was the first to see that we wanted designer underwear and a unisex fragrance.” 

The fashion press agreed. A 1990 New York Times runway review called his fall collection “quiet, wonderful and just about perfect,” noting the models’ natural faces, subdued colors and “masterly” cuts free of ruffles or decoration. “As a superbly yet simply dressed woman often makes others at a social gathering look overdressed, Mr. Klein’s fall collection … tends to make most others look overdone,” the review stated.

By the mid-1990s, Klein’s aesthetic was a fashion force. Vogue called his fall 1995 collection “classic,” praising its “clean lines and eternal shapes.” His spring 1996 collection introduced soft pastels and scoop-neck tank dresses with swimwear-inspired backs. “I love color, but I want it in flowers, not clothes,” he told the magazine.

Klein’s rise in the 1990s wasn’t just about the clothes. His provocative and often controversial advertising campaigns, shot by influential fashion photographers Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber, became cultural flashpoints.

The casting marked a break from the "glamazon" supermodels of the previous decade. In 1992, Klein hired Mark Wahlberg, then known as rapper Marky Mark, to model underwear alongside a new face: model Kate Moss. Wahlberg’s $100,000 contract paid off, write Steve Gaines and Sharon Churcher in Obsession: The Lives and Times of Calvin Klein. Sales jumped 34 percent in three months and the men’s underwear division soon grossed $85 million annually. 

That same year, Klein launched CK Calvin Klein, a more affordable bridge line. 

“I always designed for cool people who thought young,” Klein writes in his 2017 coffee table book Calvin Klein. “My daughter Marci was the inspiration for CK Calvin Klein; she had just graduated college and was starting her first job. My runway collection was too sophisticated and expensive for someone young and creative like Marci. The CK Calvin Klein line was accessible and had an edge.”

The line led to CK One, a unisex fragrance that, according to The New York Times, topped $5 million in sales in its first 10 days on the market.

“It was an anti-perfume fragrance, worn by both men and women,” Klein writes. “The bottle was a hip flask with a screw-on cap. Our advertising shocked people because we put together a group of men and women of different ages and races. They were tattooed, pierced, and, in some cases, had shaved heads. It was bold and defiant—no one had ever done anything like this in fragrance.”

While Klein collaborated with top models, actors and musicians, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy emerged as a defining muse. Before becoming a cultural icon, she worked at Calvin Klein as a publicist until 1996, when she married John F. Kennedy Jr. Her personal style—crisp white shirts, long black skirts, camel coats, cropped pants—became endlessly photographed.

“I found Carolyn Bessette in a store—we had a store in Boston,” Klein told Interview magazine in 2013. “I took one look at her and said, ‘Come to New York.’” 

Long, lean and blonde, Marsh says Bessette Kennedy’s style morphed to fit the brand, though her fashion sense continued to evolve over time.  

“Carolyn Bessette Kennedy became a cultural icon not because of her time at Calvin but because she had style, looked good in the clothes and kept an air of mystery,” Marsh says. “If you look at her clothing choices after her time at Calvin, you’ll see she wore many other labels, particularly a lot of Prada, another brand that made its name on minimalism.”

By the end of the decade, Klein had cemented himself as one of America’s most influential designers. Gwyneth Paltrow wore his label to the 1996 Oscars and the premiere of Emma. Alicia Silverstone name-checked her white slip dress as Calvin Klein in the 1996 film Clueless. Princess Diana wore a white lace Calvin Klein dress in 1997. 

Klein has won seven awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In 1993, he became the first designer to win both the menswear and womenswear categories in the same year, and in 2001 he was honored with the council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. 

In 2003, Klein stepped down from designing, handing over creative direction to designers including Francisco Costa and Raf Simons. The brand paused runway operations in 2019 but relaunched in 2024. 

“What Calvin and what the brand left into culture is more than an item, wardrobe or sense of taste but a way of being and state of mind that’s a very energizing presence,” current creative director Veronica Leoni told Women’s Wear Daily in 2025. “You realize that actually, the brand belongs to the people more than it belongs to you.”