I’ve heard it said that the industry clamors to put women in leadership positions, but often hastens to pull them down. If that’s a generalization, there’s also a grain of truth to the observation. Calvin Klein’s Veronica Leoni could attest to it, if she were less discreet. Instead, she proved the critics wrong today with a collection that got to the essence of what Klein stood for. “The idea of being modern is the absence of decoration,” said Klein on Vogue’s Run-Through podcast last year. “If the design is good and the shape is good and the silhouette, it doesn’t need a lot of extra stuff to make a person feel better. So I’ve just always believed in stripping it.”

Strip it Leoni did. The heavy layers of fall were gone, as were the heavy-handed embellishments of last spring. In their place, she focused on what she called Klein’s foundational pieces: slip dresses, slim skirts and trousers, a perfect tee and the right jacket to wear on top. It takes a lot of confidence to send out something so reduced.

For a backdrop, there were four Walter De Maria sculptures arrayed throughout the Terminal Building’s expansive rooms. De Maria was just as disciplined as Klein in his minimalism, but those sculptures weren’t essential, not based on the equation that Solange, seated front row next to Teyana Taylor, set up in the monologue on the show’s soundtrack: “The truest practice of minimalism is determining what is 100% necessary.”

So, what is necessary, according to Leoni? A simple, straightforward blazer not in wool but in cotton; high-waisted, straight-leg jeans in the palest of washes with subtle creases down the front of legs; a trench in gray tone plaid. Leoni was looking at the wardrobe of Georgia O’Keeffe, who developed a uniform over the years of boiled-down but well-made basics. “I really tried to own that sort of modularity in the wardrobe and tried to practice the idea of repetition that is so important in minimalism,” Leoni noted, which is why the knit silk jersey tees were repeated in day and evening looks, and bandeau tops were worn over high-neck button-downs and on their own with matching skirts.

Truth be told, the collection wasn’t flourish-free, but Mr. Clean himself would surely approve of an effortlessly elegant white bias-cut slip dress that utilized both the matte and shiny sides of its silk.