LONDON — Nensi Dojaka, the LVMH Prize-winning brand that has taken social media by storm with her barely there designs, is returning to London Fashion Week after going undercover for two seasons to work on a collaboration with Calvin Klein, restructure wholesale and build a cross-border e-commerce operation.
The Calvin Klein collaboration, first reported by WWD on Thursday, will be unveiled as part of the designer’s spring 2025 show on Saturday evening, to be held at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel.
It will be followed by a worldwide release online right after the show and across select Calvin Klein stores and retail partners such as Selfridges in London, where a pop-up with a custom installation will take over the atrium space on the women’s designer fashion-focused second floor from Monday to Oct. 5.
During an interview in her studio, Dojaka said Calvin Klein’s sensual, minimalistic take on fashion has long been a source of inspiration. Runway and campaign images from the early days can often be found on her mood board.
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“At the time, we had quite a few proposals for collaboration. I felt Calvin Klein should be the first one because I know the brand so well,” said Dojaka, whose evening numbers often come with details borrowed from lingerie.
“They came with very specific requests about doing underwear. I had studied underwear before. I never had the resources or the chance to properly develop it, to make it available for women of all body shapes, and they have the expertise to do that,” she added.
To develop the collaboration, Calvin Klein granted Dojaka access to its archive — where she was able to get up close with pieces from the ’90s and outtakes of campaigns from that era — as well as its latest technical innovations in size inclusivity.
“The bras are quite intricate. To be able to scale them to very small and quite big, it’s truly impressive, and they all work and feel the same across all sizes. They used this special padding called minimalist micro, and it’s supposed to have minimal coverage, but maximum support,” the designer added. “I have been wearing the prototype of one of the bras for almost a year, even to the gym.”
Dojaka said she has had weight fluctuations her whole life, and she was able to go through a physical transformation recently with the help of a personal trainer. This experience reminded her that size inclusivity should be at the center of the collaboration.
In addition to bras — going from 32A to 34DD — and panties that embody both brands’ DNA, there are a total of 44 items that also include fine knits, tailoring, silk dresses and bodysuits with sizes ranging from 0 to 14.
Some of them can be seen in teaser campaigns online and across London ahead of the show, featuring “Dune” star Rebecca Ferguson, and models Jill Kortleve and Mona Tougaard, shot at Greenwich’s courtyard and Painted Hall at sunset by Harley Weir.
“They are three very different women, and I think that’s a very important message because this collaboration is about women and empowering their sexuality. We shot it in Greenwich where you can see London in all its beauty. It’s almost like Calvin Klein taking a trip to London via our show,” she added.
The Nensi Dojaka collaboration is a warm-up of sorts for Calvin Klein’s formal runway return next February in New York 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.
Eva Serrano, global brand president at Calvin Klein, said she values Dojaka’s expertise in the construction of underwear and her distinct and feminine aesthetic.
“Underwear is a key pillar of the Calvin Klein brand, and we were excited about the idea of exploring together a collection rooted in underwear that is reinterpreted for today. I believe this collaboration authentically blends both brands’ visions and resources, by introducing a new take on sensual that integrates our design team’s technical innovations through a fashion lens,” she said.
“Knowing that we can boost the visibility and impact of such a strong emerging female talent adds a new layer of importance. I am confident that her sensual design language and rich color palette will excite our audience and bring a fresh point of view while also reaching a new one,” added Serrano, who joined the brand in March 2023 from Zara. Nensi Dojaka is the first designer Calvin Klein has collaborated with under her leadership.
Speaking of her main collection, Dojaka said spring 2025 will be a juxtaposition between floral elements and strong, architectural lines. The latter, according to Dojaka, was influenced by her enduring love for maths, and her younger sister Sindi, an architect who is now closely involved with the brand.
Launching in tandem with the Calvin Klein capsule, the brand will unveil its own e-commerce site after the show.
The brand’s bestselling styles will be available alongside new season drops and the Calvin Klein collaboration. Fans of the label will be able to preorder looks from the spring 2025 collection soon as well. A warehouse has been set up in Italy to manage and fulfill the orders.
Dojaka said the past year has been challenging but rewarding as the company went through a drastic internal restructuring to better prepare itself for a fluctuating market.
It parted ways with wholesaler Tomorrow, and appointed Lavinia Hall, former wholesale and franchise director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alexander McQueen, to spearhead wholesale and buyer relations.
“If I could go back in time and bring my takeaway from everything that’s happened, I would not have let the brand be so overdistributed. It takes time to settle down with your supply chain. We have now scaled back a tiny bit, but it is making the business much healthier,” Dojaka said.
In the eyes of Hall, the next step to further building Nensi Dojaka’s commercial success is aligning the brand’s delivery cadence with the retail calendar, giving stockists a full trading period with two drops a season, as well as developing a core essentials range to give customers access to the brand’s signature pieces throughout the year.
To achieve that, the company moved its core collection sales to the pre-collection calendar in Milan for the first time in June, while the more dress-focused runway line will be available for buyers to buy right after the show in London.
There has been an ongoing effort for the brand to broaden its offering beyond sexy cocktail numbers that have been seen on a long list of top models and pop icons, such as Zendaya, Beyoncé, Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Rodrigo, Sienna Miller and Rita Ora.
The hybrid pieces where wardrobe classics like denim, outerwear and tailored jackets are reimagined with a touch of assertiveness and femininity, according to Dojaka, are picking up momentum among buyers.
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 has since added 23 more accounts for spring 2024. (The fall 2024 range was not procured due to the season switch.)
Developing a retail-focused strategy within wholesale — cultivating relationships with top-tier accounts and providing each market with a distinguished edit to meet their specific needs — is also key, Hall said.
“Nensi Dojaka occupies a unique market position as an emerging designer who manufactures over 90 percent of her collections in Italy. This aligns her positioning with established luxury brands like Alaïa and Saint Laurent,” she contended.
Looking ahead, Dojaka said she is keen to crack the Asian market, where the perception of female sensuality is different from the West. She hopes that the slightly more approachable ways of showing and not showing skin in her spring 2025 collection will appeal to them.
She’d also like to try her hand at a legacy brand. Industry sources said that several brands, including Blumarine, Lanvin and Givenchy, have approached her in the past about a potential creative director role.
Dojaka declined to comment on the speculation but expressed her excitement for the arrival of Sarah Burton at Givenchy as the house’s second female creative director.
“It’s sad for me to see that there are not enough female creative directors. We understand the female body differently. I also respect Donatella Versace. She’s survived decades, and it’s still exciting. I’d like to achieve that too,” she added.
Born in Tirana, the capital of Albania, Dojaka graduated with a master’s degree in fashion from Central Saint Martins in 2019. She was later handpicked by Lulu Kennedy to show as a part of Fashion East on the official calendar of London Fashion Week.
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 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, 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.
