Vanities / Beauty
It is impossible to pinpoint the moment
that Gen X culture hit its zenith, but one
could make a sound case for sometime
in 1994. That year was major: Tonya vs.
Nancy, Pulp Fiction, Weezer’s “Buddy
Holly,” the birth of lad mags, the death
of Kurt Cobain, the debut of Friends
and, a few months later, “the Rachel.”
In fashion, that was when grunge
crossed over from mildewed Seattle rock
venues into suburban malls—a trickle-
down effect of Marc Jacobs’s spring 1993
collection for Perry Ellis, which put
supermodels in flannel and knit beanies
(and later got the designer fired).
Soon, brands were bending sidewaysto appeal to next-gen consumers, whom
they imagined to be disaffected, wary of
being marketed to, and more or less
against buying things. So how do you sell
consumer goods to anti-consumerists?
The answer is much the same way that
you would sell to anyone: by appealing
to their vanity. At the time, no company
did this more effectively than Calvin
Klein, which sold $90 million in CK One
perfume to 20-somethings by offering
a reflection of themselves as cool as hell:
androgynous, stoic, comfortable in
scuffed lug-sole boots and cheap satin
slip dresses. The 1994 campaign for
the unisex fragrance—shot in black-
and-white by Steven Meisel, inspired
by Andy Warhol’s Factory candids—
featured a scrum of lithe young things,
including Kate Moss. The model
Jenny Shimizu, photographed with a
buzz cut and a pair of low-slung jeans,
became an underground style icon.
“All of those Calvin Klein campaigns
when I was a kid were so iconic,” says
Eliot Sumner, speaking by phone from
London. Born in 1990 to musician
Sting and actress Trudie Styler, Sumner
remembers gazing up at the billboards.
Now, with the launch of CK Everyone,
the 29-year-old is posing in those jeans.
Rebooting an era-defining fragrance
could be considered a play to nostalgia.
(Jacobs reissued that career-catalyzing
collection in 2018; the 1995 album Jagged
Little Pill is now a Broadway show.) But
CK One remains particularly prescient.
“It introduced a new olfactive approach
that wasn’t fully feminine or masculine,”
says Alberto Morillas, the perfumer
who cocreated the original scent, which
evoked the frosted glass bottle it came
in: translucent, clean, almost ghostly.
Some whiffs recalled aftershave; others
gave off puffs of powder and papaya.
If it was daring to subvert the male-
female dichotomy at that time, CK
Everyone arrives at a moment where
fluidity is the lingua franca. “People are
freeing themselves from the traditional
restrictions of gender,” says Morillas,
once again the nose. CK Everyone is
about reveling in a kind of prismaticGeneration NEXT
Calvin Klein’s iconic gender-neutral scent, CK One, is being
reborn for a new creative class. Musician-actor ELIOT SUMNER
speaks to the here and now By Rachel Syme
Suit jacket and shirt by Saint Laurent by
Anthony Vaccarello. Styled by Rúben Moreira.