# Calvin Klein new logo (2017)

> Calvin Klein launched a new logo in Feb 2017, designed by Peter Saville. Feb 3 2017: mixed-case 'Calvin Klein' replaced by all-caps tighter-kerned 'CALVIN KLEIN' (Peter Saville + Raf Simons).

## Key facts

- Brand: Calvin Klein
- Launched: Feb 2017
- Studio: Peter Saville
- What changed: Feb 3 2017: mixed-case 'Calvin Klein' replaced by all-caps tighter-kerned 'CALVIN KLEIN' (Peter Saville + Raf Simons).
- Why: Calvin Klein called its new logo a return to the spirit of the original and an acknowledgement of the founder and foundations of the house.
- Industry: Retail
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/calvin-klein-2017/before.svg (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/calvin-klein-2017/after.svg (after)

## The rebrand, explained

Raf Simons had just been installed as Calvin Klein's creative director and had not yet shown a full collection when, in February 2017, the brand revealed a new logo on Instagram. For the job he brought in Peter Saville, best known for album art for Joy Division and New Order.

The change is small on paper. The mixed-case Calvin Klein became CALVIN KLEIN in capitals, with tighter letter spacing, still in a plain sans serif. The brand called it a return to the spirit of the original and an acknowledgement of the founder and foundations of the house.

Design Week, Dezeen and W all credited Saville. Coverage pointed out the pattern: new creative directors redesigning iconic logos had become a custom, and Diane von Furstenberg had just unveiled an all-caps sans serif logo of its own, following YSL. All three, W noted, had once been associated with serif monograms.

Fans were less sure than the design press. Creative Bloq and Marie Claire reported many mourning the familiar mixed-case wordmark and calling the change unnecessary, while others welcomed the simplicity as a sign of Simons' direction. TypeRoom praised Saville's work as a subtle redrawing rather than a reinvention.

The collaboration had history. Harper's Bazaar noted that Simons had been inspired by Peter Saville and had worked with him on his own menswear line's fall 2003 collection, and that the logo arrived a week before Simons's first Calvin Klein show. WWD later counted the redesign among Simons's first orders of business, alongside an entirely new mark, Calvin Klein 205W39NYC, introduced at that debut runway show, and placed both within a wider return to logos across fashion, from Gucci to Balenciaga.

Dezeen supplied the precedent everyone had in mind: fashion fans were upset in 2012 when Hedi Slimane turned the Yves Saint Laurent monogram into a text logo that dropped Yves. It also recalled Simons's own path, arriving from Dior and running an ongoing collaboration with Adidas. Measured against the Slimane episode, this change is far gentler, and that restraint is the point: it signals a new creative director without picking a fight with the label's past.

That observation is the real story. The CK logo was an early marker of the flat, capitalised fashion wordmark wave that Saville himself extended at Burberry a year later. On its own it is a fine, tidy logo. As a trend it flattened a sector whose marks used to have personality, and Calvin Klein sits at the start of that line.

In short: Tidy on its own, consequential as a trend: the start of fashion's all-caps era.

## Sources

- https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/6-12-february-2017/calvin-klein-unveils-new-logo-collaboration-peter-saville/
- https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/03/peter-saville-raf-simons-subtly-redesign-iconic-calvin-klein-logo/
- https://www.wmagazine.com/story/calvin-klein-new-logo

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "Calvin Klein new logo (2017)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/calvin-klein-2017/, last updated 2026-10-20.