'Love Story' Is Bringing Back ’90s Minimalism—But Kelly Klein Wore It First
Friend of CBK, ex-wife of Calvin Klein: At 205 West 39th Street, she wore the ’90s uniform before it became legend.
Each time a new episode of Love Story drops, the ’90s come rushing back. Renewed interest in Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s minimalist style follows almost instantly. Silky slip dresses. The tortoiseshell headband resurfaces. Black-and-ivory palettes take over mood boards, and somehow even an almond-toe heel feels relevant again. The Calvin Klein years, anchored at 205 West 39th Street, where the showroom was spare, fluorescent-lit, and—according to office lore—white orchids were the only flower allowed, suddenly read like a collective style blueprint.
As the FX series traces CBK’s ascent at Calvin Klein, another woman comes back into focus: Kelly Klein. Long before Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy became shorthand for ’90s minimalism, Kelly was wearing the uniform in real time. She helped shape Calvin's taste—how the clothes were worn, photographed, and remembered.
After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she joined the company in 1981 as an assistant designer and remained closely connected to the brand—not only as Calvin's wife after they wed in 1986—but also during its boom years, spearheading the adaptation of CK men's underwear for women. Naturally, she understood the brand from the inside: how it fit, how it moved, and, most importantly, how it lived on a woman’s body.
Serving peak off-duty ’90s, Kelly sports a razor-sharp blazer, bootcut denim, and classic black heels.
Scroll through the archival photos, and her style choices feel specific. A trench that looks crisp but lived-in, belted and re-belted, worn as a real layer, not cosplay. White T-shirts tucked into matching trousers and finished with a slim black belt. Slip dresses in cool tones that skim without ever clinging. Even when she’s front row years later, the formula holds: a razor-sharp blazer, bootcut denim, classic black heels. It’s minimalism you can repeat without getting bored.
Kelly Klein dressed up in a belted white trench—thrown over a barely-there slip dress, the kind of minimalist layering that still reads polished today.
Calvin may have been the designer, but Kelly understood the woman stepping into the clothes: pragmatic and deliberately repetitive. You invested in one great coat and built around it for years. You let denim soften at the knee. You kept the black heel in rotation and resoled it because it still worked. Minimalism was about muscle memory just as much as the aesthetic.
A perfectly slouchy white tee tucked into straight-leg white jeans defined Klein's off-duty aesthetic as much as the front row did.
As audiences rediscover the era through Love Story (with weekly releases culminating on March 26), the spotlight will remain on its central heroine. Still, Kelly is the woman who wore the uniform before it became myth. In a moment when the decade is being endlessly rebranded, her wardrobe feels less like nostalgia and more like a reminder: Great style has always been about how a woman lives in it, not how it hangs on a rack.
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