Mr. Calvin Klein Talks His Design Legacy, The 90s, and More!

February 27, 2026·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

Calvin Klein describes how he wheeled a broken rack of samples to meet the president of Bonwit Teller.

The Run-Through is Vogue's fashion podcast, typically co-hosted by Chloe Mell and Cher Minardi. This episode is recorded with one host in London and the other preparing to fly to Milan Fashion Week, facing weather disruptions (a New York blizzard and planes turning around mid-flight due to running out of water). The preamble covers Vogue's recent London activities: a Vogue Cafe event in London, a talk with Paloma (a designer described as having a British passport and a thoughtful perspective on the fashion industry), and an activation with Casa Magazine in which Vogue created small mailbox-style free book libraries containing titles referenced throughout their spring issue — books mentioned by Jonathan Anderson, Rosalia, and John Lithgow in profiles throughout the issue. The hosts discuss the first physical print run of a new Rosalia cover issue arriving in the office and at Casa Magazine locations, noting the tactile pleasure of the paper stock. The episode then moves into the Calvin Klein interview. Klein discusses his design philosophy, his legacy in American fashion, the decade of the 1990s when his influence was at its peak — a period defined by minimalist aesthetics, provocative advertising, and cultural breakthrough — and his current thinking about restraint and responsibility in design. Klein reflects on what the fashion industry has become and how his original sensibility still shapes his perspective, even from a position outside active design work.

As heard by us

A sharp fashion-history conversation about backing, conviction, and the department-store world that helped launch Calvin Klein.

This episode starts in the weeds of Milan-week travel trouble, then settles into a fashion-history conversation that is better for the detour than it first seems.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for Calvin Klein's Bonwit Teller breakthrough and a frank lesson in fashion nerve, conviction, and stamina.

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