I swear the spirit of Carine Roitfeld must be haunting me…. or, at least, her legacy as a stylist before becoming renowned fashion editor at French Vogue.  Awhile ago, I was browsing photographer’s Mario Testino’s über-cool site, going through his archives. I came across his shoot he did for the Calvin Klein Spring 1999 campaign featuring the one and only Kate Moss. (Ms. Moss’ brooding  male counterpart, by the way, is Mr. Colin Branca, who still works in the industry.)  Shortly therefafter, I learned, via the Fashion Spot, that the stylist was none other than Ms. Roitfeld herself. So not only did Ms. Roitfeld shaped my style consciousness via the triumvirate she formed with Testino and Tom Ford in the Gucci era–you can catch the earlier meditation on their work here–but she also influenced me stateside through the architectonic designs of the one and only Mr. Klein.

While an advertising campaign may seem as irrelevant for some, these Testino-Roitfeld images jumpstarted my memory…  though not exactly in a Proustian way. When Proust took a bite of the madeleine, as he recounts in Du côté de chez Swann, he remembered his youth in Cambray, the warm cup of herbal tea.  In contrast, I don’t ever remember seeing  seeing this campaign. But somehow, they capture the spirit of that era, the end of the nineties right before the new millenium and the end of the proverbial party in 2001. I was a sophomore in New York the year that this campaign was put together and released. For me, this  campaign captures what was the epitome of style for me. A bare white room… simple but just so chic clothes… even the chop of Kate’s hair. As a historical document, the campaign succinctly captures a particular fin-de-siècle aesthetic in a minimalist mode. Personally, it’s almost like discovering a photograph from a decade ago that I somehow recognize though I don’t remember ever having taken it.

Interestingly enough, Testino captures what video couldn’t catch. I had already seen this collection awhile ago, via YouTube. All that’s conveyed is a minimalist aesthetic, conveyed in a broad palette of colors. Yes, there’s the music of the era–Massive Attack amongst others–and the stoic expressions of the models. But the distinctive edge that Testino conveys so well just isn’t there. Reduced to a digital feed-perhaps akin to the archival films of yesteryear-the fine details have been lost, and with it, the ephemeral essence of the era.

Moreover, this campaign, under the direction of Testino and Roitfeld, reminded me what I had originally gleaned from the end of the nineties and has remained with me ever since.  No controversy, no fuss, no overt theatrics. Simple but sensual with a razor sharp edge, like that of a finely tailored garment fitted to the body or  carefully sheered locks of hair against the clarity of white.

Photographed by David Sims, the new Spring 2010 Calvin Klein Collection for women campaign features Monica Jagaciak, also known as Jac. This is her second, and back-to-back, appearance for Calvin Klein Collection. Jac has already been hailed as the new face of Calvin Klein going into the new decade. [via Fashion Gone Rogue]

[Image via Fashionologie]

I’m in love with the sheer naturalness and simplicity of Francisco Costa’s 2010 collection for Calvin Klein and find that the campaign helps to translate it into a different life. Of course, wouldn’t it be nice to lounge around with moistened hair and dewey skin by some George Nakashima table looking pensive? But I guess some of us do need to go to work after all…

In retrospect, the collection and campaign, now aeshetically paired, make me think of the Calvin Klein image back in the ninetes. In particular, the wet hair and clingy fabric just takes me back to Christy Turlington in those great Eternity ads.

Of course, the black and white cinematography and waves on the wind also parallels Chris Isaak and Helena Christensen rolling around on the black sand beaches of Hawai’i Island for his song “Wicked Game”, directed by the late and great Herb Ritts.

But then again, wasn’t part of the nineties aesthetic about black-and-white artsy moodiness and minimalism after all the excesses of the eighties? After way too much bling bling, I’m happy to see a revival of a more paired down look.

In the web chatter that surrounded Francisco Costa’s recently debuted Spring 2010 collection for Calvin Klein, several references were made to how Costa had revamped Calvin Klein’s famous t-shirt inspired collection from 1994—the same collection that launched Kate Moss as the designer’s muse.

In one of my recent jaunts on YouTube, I happened to find by chance a segment from Elsa Klensch’s Style featuring the same collection. Watching the clip was a flash back into my youth in the early nineties. This was before the Internet explosion, when we all had to actually read the newspaper or watch television to find out was going on. Klensch’s distinctive accent was overly nostalgic for me. Her voice took me immediately back to being a teenager, sitting in a living room in west O‘ahu and watching flashes of an intriguing, glamorous world, as far away from New York as one could possibly be.

Unbelievably, sixteen years have passed since Calvin Klein debuted the collection back in 1993. As I look at the clip now, the passage of the years, the South Asian-infused runway soundtrack, and Klein’s urbanized accent (he did grow up in the Bronx) makes the whole segment seem like something out of an art installation. Some pieces scream the early nineties, particularly the black and white dress and long sleeve t-shirt combos. Other pieces, on the other hand, show how Klein’s relaxed yet sophisticated minimalist vision has moved into the general population. Of course, there are Klein’s models… a young and fresh Kate Moss sharing the runway with the androgynous Jenny Shimizu.

Klein’s commentary is particularly fantastic, saying a lot without saying that much at the same. “The clothes are tonal…,” he says. “…and very face powdery colors… but with an edge, so there’s a surprise of a shot of black or the shot of white or the black with the white. So that there’s always a strength and a softness that I think is very special.” But how much detail can one add to the simplicity of a t-shirt or tank peaking beneath a dress. In the end, it’s the bare juxtaposition of colors and textures that speaks for itself.

As I move into my thirties, seeing this clip makes me realize how much I am a child of the nineties. I didn’t get experience the Summer of Love, the sexual revolution of the seventies, or the eighties’ over-the-top decadence. Instead, the culture of my youth was the sobriety that followed in the wake of AIDS combined with the hope that marked the beginning of the Clinton years. Though the nineties don’t sizzle as other decades did, the nineties had its own particular edge, a clarity and a chic that one could pull off simply with just a flash of white against black. It’s this kind of minimal allure that one would eventually lead me to New York to experience this for the last few years of the decade. Of course, all of this came to a final end with 9/11 and the Bush years, which produced a cultural shockwave that we’re finally coming out of.

As we move as a culture into a new era, and the nineties are now an almost even ten years behind us, it seems appropriate that the nineties start to makes its influence felt. After the explosion of decadence and excess of the last few years, I would be more than happy to have my aesthetic sense sharpened by an edge of black and white simplicity.