LONDON — A warm-up for its formal runway return next year, Calvin Klein on Thursday will tease its collaboration with the LVMH Prize-winning, London-based Albanian designer Nensi Dojaka, WWD has learned.
The collaboration will be unveiled as part of Dojaka’s spring 2025 show on Saturday evening, to be held at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London.
It will mark the designer’s return to London Fashion Week after releasing the past two collections in the form of a look book.
It comes as little surprise that Calvin Klein would pursue a collaboration with Dojaka, whose blend of seduction, poise and elegance has fostered a loyal online following and attracted a slew of celebrity fans including the likes of Alexa Chung, Beyoncé, Kendall Jenner, Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Rodrigo, Sienna Miller, Cailee Spaeny, and fellow Albanian pop star Dua Lipa, who wore an asymmetric mini-shirtdress from spring 2024 to the Sunny Hill Festival during the summer.
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Calvin Klein’s sensual, minimalistic take on fashion, especially from the ’90s, has long been a source of inspiration for Dojaka, who studied underwear at the London College of Fashion before being admitted to the MA Fashion by course leader Fabio Piras at Central Saint Martins.
The brand said the collaboration will see Dojaka’s “intricate visual language” meeting with “the innovation and design codes core to Calvin Klein.”
The Nensi Dojaka collaboration comes at a time when Calvin Klein is gearing up for a formal runway return next year after a five-year break, with Veronica Leoni, the new creative director of the brand’s now-revived Collection business.
Calvin Klein Collection, which had been renamed 205W39NYC, was shuttered in March 2019 following the abrupt departure of former chief creative officer Raf Simons in December 2018.
Born in Tirana, the capital of Albania, Dojaka moved to the U.K. at the age of 16 to attend boarding school in Shrewsbury, England, where she did fine arts, double maths and English literature. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2019 and her collection was presented at the press show during London Fashion Week in February that year.
In December, it was revealed that she would showcase as part of Lulu Kennedy’s emerging talent support platform Fashion East alongside Goom Heo, Saul Nash, Ancuta Sarca and Gareth Wrighton.
She was then shortlisted as one of the 20 finalists for the 2021 LVMH Prize for Young Designers and took home the grand prize in September 2021, two weeks before her solo debut show for the spring 2022 season during London Fashion Week. She snapped up the BFC Foundation Award for Emerging Talent at the Fashion Awards later that year.
The brand’s spring 2023 show was one of the most-viewed collections on the web while influencer marketing platform Lefty calculated that the show generated more than $1.6 million worth of earned media value, which is just slightly under JW Anderson in London.
Last year the brand was among a cohort of London-based emerging fashion designers who created bespoke outfits for Zendaya‘s latest Smartwater campaign. The “Euphoria” star wore a bespoke flowy blue dress by Dojaka based on a style from her line’s fall 2023 collection.
Retailers are keen to work with her as well. She designed a bridal capsule for Mytheresa and took over the atrium at the womenswear floor at Selfridges for an eveningwear-heavy capsule. LuisaViaRoma asked for worldwide exclusivity on the red gown Emily Ratajkowski wore to close the spring 2023 show and featured it on its “Runway Icons” extravaganza in Florence in June 2023.
Her shoe range, first introduced in spring 2023, has been growing steadily too. Its first season was picked up by leading retailers like Ssense, Selfridges and Mytheresa, and the range has since added 23 more accounts for spring 2024.
