Contrary to what many people think, it didn’t start with Kate Moss in the 1990s, but with Brooke Shields in the 1980s: very young and considered among the most beautiful of her generation, it was she who brought to life behind Richard Avedon’s lens one of the most iconic campaigns in history. With the famous line “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing,” the model made the Calvin Klein jeans advertisement memorable, also generating quite a bit of controversy. A success that the brand was able to replicate in the following decade, moving from jeans to underwear, thanks precisely to Kate Moss, at the time still a little-known young girl until, in the Calvin Klein offices, she was chosen to star in a campaign destined to establish her permanently as a leading model. Hers was not the conventional beauty of the models of the time: we are in the 1990s, dominated by the faces of famous supermodels – from Naomi Campbell to Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington – absolute protagonists of the catwalks.
In the years since, the brand has continued to choose faces perfectly emblematic of the zeitgeist. From the last campaign featuring Dakota Johnson, which went viral within seconds of being posted on the brand’s channels, to last year’s campaign featuring Bad Bunny, which was able to generate $8.4 million in Media Impact Value in less than just 48 hours. Before that, other similarly viral campaigns have featured Jeremy Allen White, Greta Lee – released the year after the film Past Lives, in which she stars – adding to a long list of faces chosen by the brand. These include Kendall Jenner, or the newly married couple of Hailey Bieber and Justin Bieber in the 2019 campaign, the same year that Shawn Mendes, Noah Centineo, Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky were involved.
[📸 IPA; Instagram: calvinklein / ©️ Mario Sorrenti, Mert Alas 📹
Instagram: lilbieber, dakotajohnson, calvinklein / ©️ Mert Alas; YouTube: calvinklein]
