The latest to appear in Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins campaign, the Aussie pop prince discusses the power of vulnerability, feeling sexy, and why he’s speaking his truth
- TextJack Moss
Troye Sivan is no stranger to declaring his “truth”: in 2013, the then-18-year-old popstar posted a video on his YouTube channel entitled “Coming Out”. “I want you guys to know that I’m gay,” he announced to his several-thousand subscribers. “This is not something that I’m ashamed of and it’s not something anyone should have to be ashamed of. So why not share it with you guys?” Since then, the doe-eyed Australian has asserted his queerness through his music: late last year, he released his second album Bloom, an ectastic declaration of what it means to be young, and gay. The opening track, Seventeen, dreamily conjures a Grindr hook-up with an older man aged 17; the closing, Animal, a soaring ode to newfound domesticity with his boyfriend, model Jacob Bixenman.
This afternoon, he is revealed as the latest face of Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins ‘I Speak My Truth’ campaign – joining Shawn Mendes, Billie Eilish, Noah Centineo, and Chika, announced last week, who each share their own truths in an accompanying series of films by director Jonas Lindstroem. In Sivan’s film, he walks through a misty surburban street, eyes smudged with make-up. “I am still him in a lot of ways,” he narrates. “The scrawny kid, I have to kind of convince myself that I’m deserving of being the person I always wanted to be.” In a second clip, he rises above an adoring crowd to the anthemic strains of his song Bloom. “I’m a lucky diva,” he whispers to camera.“I spent a lot of time planning with Jonas,” he exclusively tells Another Man. “I wanted to make something that felt like a tongue-in-cheek fantasy-turns-reality story. Vulnerability is never easy, but I’ve grown to really love the liberation on the other end of it.”
In the accompanying campaign, photographed by Mario Sorrenti, Sivan sits, open-shirted; in another, he peers towards the camera, a denim shirt slipping off his shoulders. The process was nervewracking, he says, but wearing Calvin Klein makes him feel “sexy”. “I think back to the days when I was a pubescent, closeted kid staring a second too long at the photos of the boys on the CK underwear boxes,” he explains. “I laugh at – and enjoy – feeling like a part of that now.”
Chika – the Alabama native who rose to viral fame after she called out Kanye West in a freestyle rap over his own track Jesus Walks – has too expressed the power of feeling part of something you might have once felt excluded. “You know how many times I’ve been told this couldn’t happen? I’ve heard the word ‘marketable’ tossed around like a football at a public park, but I’ve never bought into they hype,” the rapper and actress wrote on Instagram. “There’s not another you. And whatever body you were placed in is worthy of celebration. Fuck marketable. We’re iconic. Thank you, @calvinklein. This is the beginning.”
“I really love what Chika does and have for a long time,” Sivan says. “Everyone’s so hot in this campaign.”
Sivan’s reveal comes with a slew of other new – and some returning – #MyCalvins faces: musician A$AP Rocky, models Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, Brockhampton’s Kevin Abstract, Korean actor Yoo Ah-In and actress and trans activist Indya Moore all star in part two of the ‘I Speak My Truth’ campaign, released today.
Watch Sivan’s ‘I Speak My Truth’ film below.
