CK One: The 1994 Unisex Fragrance and Its Soda-Bottle Cap

CK One went on sale in 1994, Calvin Klein says, as one scent for men and women alike. Its bottle designer, Fabien Baron, is the only source for why the cap twists off like a soda's.

Is CK One unisex?

Yes, by its maker's own description. Calvin Klein's US product page, archived in April 2024, says so in one line:

The revolutionary first CK fragrance is designed for men and women to share.

Calvin Klein, US product page for CK One

The brand's UK store sells it as CK One Unisex Eau de Toilette, "one fragrance for all" (May 2026). Natasha Stagg noted in System Magazine's 2024 feature on the campaign that the brand's site lists CK One on both its men's and women's fragrance pages.

In their release for CK One Essence, Calvin Klein and Coty say the original launched at Tower Records in 1994, and call it "a fragrance for everyone". System Magazine and Air Mail's 2023 retrospective both quote the line of its mid-1990s television spots: a fragrance "for a man or a woman". Coty's campaign release of February 2018 said the scent was "designed to be gender fluid and shared".

The "first CK" on the product page does not make it the brand's first perfume. System Magazine notes that Calvin Klein already had Obsession, from 1985, and Eternity, from 1988. How older fashion houses entered perfume is traced in our guide to the first perfumes of Chanel, Dior, Hermès and Louis Vuitton.

Who created CK One?

Two Firmenich perfumers composed it and Fabien Baron designed its bottle, according to their employers and to Baron himself. The 2024 release from Calvin Klein and Coty calls Alberto Morillas "the perfumer behind the iconic original CK One". His employer's list of his major wins gives CK One, for Calvin Klein, in 1994, the earliest year on the page.

Firmenich's release of 15 June 2017, on a lifetime award for its master perfumer Harry Fremont, counts Calvin Klein's CK One among his "creations and co-creations". Air Mail names the two men together as "a team of noses" from Firmenich. Morillas's later work is followed in our article on Alberto Morillas and his perfumes.

In Baron's telling, the push came from Klein's daughter, then in her twenties, who suggested a fragrance for younger people, System Magazine reports. Klein did not split that audience by sex: "youth was female and male; youth was youth", Baron recalled.

System Magazine reports that Klein hired Baron after seeing the minimal bottle he had made with Issey Miyake for L'Eau d'Issey, his first perfume commission according to Phaidon's article on his fragrance bottles. He then worked on the object directly with Klein. Phaidon calls CK One "one of Baron's best-known works".

Why does the bottle have a twist cap?

Because every kid in America was opening a Coke, says the man who designed it. Fabien Baron, art director of the 1994 campaign, told the story to System Magazine 30 years on. It starts with a question he says he asked: "What is the gesture that every single kid is doing today in America?"

They're opening a bottle of Coke. Let's do a twist cap, just like a bottle of Coke.

Fabien Baron, in System Magazine, Beauty Issue 3

In the same breath he proposed aluminum, so it could be recycled, and no extra packaging. The bottle itself, the magazine writes, was designed "to resemble a simple pocket flask, in frosted colorless glass". Air Mail says it was made to resemble "an anonymous flask"; the 2024 release from Calvin Klein and Coty speaks of "the original CK One screw-top flask".

The soda story has one witness. None of the six Calvin Klein and Coty texts we read mentions Coke; they confirm the screw top, not the reason for it. The reason is Baron's account alone, from the person best placed to know it.

Bottles have carried a perfume's idea before. Coty's website still says that François Coty believed buying perfume "wasn't just about the scent, but also about the beauty and splendor of the bottle itself". Our story of René Lalique's perfume bottles for Coty follows where that belief led.

Was CK One the first unisex fragrance?

No, not in the plain sense: men and women wore the same scents long before 1994, and the claims made for CK One hold only with a qualifier. The oldest evidence here is eau de Cologne. Germany's patent office, in its history of the Farina house, dates the firm to 13 July 1709 in Cologne and says it still makes its Eau de Cologne to the original recipe. It lists Napoleon as one of Farina's customers and cites an order from Queen Victoria, for 600 bottles, in the company archive.

Perfume houses also claimed the title before Calvin Klein did. Guerlain's page for Jicky, its perfume of 1889, called it "the first unisex fragrance in perfumery". Its UK product page for Jicky, archived in November 2025, says the perfume was soon "adopted by both", women and men.

The last row is the strongest evidence: a public authority reporting a firm's customers and its archive. The "first" lines of Guerlain and Calvin Klein are each house's account of its own perfume.

Phaidon's qualifier, a major fashion house, is the one the older examples leave standing: Farina and Guerlain are perfume houses. "Mass" and "mainstream" sit less easily with eau de Cologne: the patent office says it ruled the perfume market until at least the close of the 19th century. None of these writers lists the earlier launches that would settle the point.

What does CK One smell like?

Fresh, citrus-led and floral, with musk and amber beneath, by Calvin Klein's own pages, which list its notes in two different ways. The US page calls it "clean and contemporary with a refreshing green tea signature throughout". The UK page calls it "an iconic citrus perfume for men and women".

The two pages agree on bergamot at the top, rose and violet in the heart, and musk and amber in the base. Coty's 2018 release summed up the mix as "an energetic citrus zest with feminine florals, and masculine musk". Alberto Morillas, quoted by Air Mail in 2023, called it "fresh with floral, icy notes and a little vanilla"; vanilla appears on neither official list.

The US page adds one instruction: CK One "is intended to be used lavishly". The UK page files it as citrus, and our guide to the citrus family covers bergamot and its relatives, and why they fade fast.

CK One from 1994 to 2026

The flask stayed while the companies around it changed. Calvin Klein, Inc., part of PVH Corp., and Calvin Klein Fragrances, a division of Coty Inc., sign CK One's releases together: PVH owns the name, Coty makes the perfume.

CK One Essence has notes of its own: the release says Morillas built it on Italian bergamot and blood orange, a selection of teas including organic green tea, a musk upcycled from the paper industry and a sandalwood accord. Its flask gained a removable pump. The same split between a brand's owner and its licensee runs through our article on who owns Tom Ford.