CALVIN KLEIN spring-summer 2018

Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein experiment is an American experiment. Last season he identified classic tropes—diner uniforms; cowboy boots; denim, of course. For Spring, he added layers. The new motifs included Andy Warhol prints of Dennis Hopper circa Easy Rider and a 1971 Sandra Brant (is there an art movement more American than Pop?), cheerleaders, and horror movies. His Hitchcock blondes wore rubber, and gauzy nightgowns conjured Sissy Spacek in Carrie. Above the runway, Sterling Ruby installed gleaming metal buckets not unlike the one in that movie’s pivotal prom scene. Simons and his creative director and fellow Belgian, Pieter Mulier, landed stateside a year ago. Whatever or whoever could be making them think so sinisterly?

Simons said he’s attracted to film and TV (Game of Thrones is a current obsession), the reason being that he sees in the medium’s auteurs a sense of freedom that our industry currently lacks. “Fashion,” he said, “has embraced too much the spectators’ expectations.” He may be giving Hollywood too much credit—ticket sales are down, there’s a glut of superhero sequels, blah blah blah—but he has a point about fashion. There isn’t enough risk. Simons’s project here, then, was embracing that risk, and doing the weird thing, maybe even the wrong thing. Even with their Warhol prints, those sheer nightgowns don’t exactly spell summer blockbuster. Neither do the Hitchcock blondes’ rubber separates. But Simons gets credit for provocation.

The crowd was pumped. Sexy 8:00 p.m. time slot. VVIPs lined up by the dozen in the front row, with best actor Mahershala Ali and girl-of-the-moment Millie Bobby Brown among them. A new installation by Sterling Ruby featuring giant pom-poms and straight out of The Shining’s “Here’s Johnny” scene axes. It isn’t often that you can feel the anticipation at a show—actually sense it in the audience’s body language—but you could at 205 West 39th Street tonight.

“American horror, American dreams,” Simons elaborated. Where there is darkness, there is also light. Lightness he evoked with 1950s couture silhouettes (also American, according to the show notes) rendered in the unlikeliest of materials: waterproof nylon used for tents. The trio of dresses in the stuff that came midway through the show actually did look like commercial hits in the making. Two seasons in, America is proving fertile territory for Simons, even if the country is living through its own very real horror story.