Review of Calvin Klein Spring 2025 Ad Campaign by Photographer Stuart Winecoff with models Vika Evseeva and Lucas Barski
Stripped back and unzipped, a summer denim collection that is unmistakably Calvin. Shot by Stuart Winecoff and featuring models Vika Evseeva and Lucas Barski, the imagery revives the brand’s signature erotic minimalism, but with a contemporary edge that’s an exploration of tactilism and tenderness beneath the tension.
Grainy skin, exposed seams, and play of shadow and flesh; the visual language passionately pierces beyond images. While the brand’s archive has long leaned on provocation, this iteration feels less about shock and more about intimacy. As with any Calvin Klein campaign, there’s heat, but this time it’s restrained. The images, shot on the softness of sand, yet under stark light, The Summer Heat campaign stages a conversation between vulnerability and strength. Denim slouches low, shirts hang open, and skin is shown without spectacle. Instead of posturing, there’s a sense of collapse—of surrender.
Calvin Klein’s decision to return to its raw, black, white, and exposed roots serves as a reminder of the power of identity. The casting of Vika and Lucas, both expressive in the quiet serenity of waves, sidesteps the celebrity-heavy strategies dominating the denim category and even introduces a balance to some of the latest Calvin Klein moments that have captured virality at its peak: Campaigns with Jeremy Allen White and Bad Bunny. It’s a subtle assertion that authenticity still sells, especially when paired with premium denim and a knowing gaze.
Strategically, the campaign reinforces Calvin Klein’s core equities: sensuality, directness, and cultural edge. But it also reflects a wider shift in the dialogue surrounding fashion imagery, a language where intimacy is continuously redefined. Gone is the heavy-handed sexuality of the 2000s; in its place, a new kind of exposure that feels soft, human, and almost melancholic. Even the composition: bodies intertwined between grains of sand, the softness in a half-turned glance—recalls fashion’s growing interest in emotional storytelling over aesthetic bravado.
At its core, this campaign doesn’t seek to reinvent Calvin Klein—it recenters a gaze that reflects glimmers of brand identity that denim is second nature. In doing so, Calvin Klein reminds us why its formula still works: when the imagery is this stripped back, every detail matters.
Photographer | Stuart Winecoff
Models | Vika Evseeva and Lucas Barski