creative direction SHINI PARK photography assistance SIMON SCHMIDT in collaboration with
CALVIN KLEIN JEANS
I had one pair of leather trousers as a teenager. Contraband, of course. (And as genuine leather as your mum’s cast-iron skillet.) A true tiger-mother presumably would never condone her spawn to be exposed to any a lifestyle that might hint at the need of 1) weather-proof garb for helmetless fast-driving, 2) electric guitar(s), and 3) 1978 John Travolta. Tell me about it, stud. The noise it made when I walked in those trousers was not dissimilar to a packet of crisps dipped into car wax, and let’s say it was permeable as, well, your mum’s cast-iron skillet.
The secret to this item of rebellion was however, not the prospect of future-killing, homework-undoing and tramp-a-making. It was simply a teenage ploy for attention, because the first thing my mother would say is: How the damn do you wash these trousers? And you’d revel at the image of your very mother dabbing at your cheap (plastic) leather with anti-bacterial wipes in the name of laundry. REBELLION.
Because let’s be honest, good leather is like performance arts. It plants balls in your hipster panties, and gives moves like Jagger. Good leather like Calvin Klein Jeans’ Rebel Edge capsule collection, in which walking sounds nothing like squeaky crisps, but a Toyota Prius. (That shit be silent, and buttery.) This rebellion is against your goody-two-shoes self – Eat dessert first, write your to-do list on a banana peel; stand on the left, walk on the right, get yelled at, yell back. See? Good leather is a keeper.
Calvin Klein Jeans Rebel Edge capsule, available at the Regent Street store and MyTheresa.com