Calvin Klein

Born:-11/19/1942

Popularized designer jeans, criticized for his (some say sleazy) advertising campaigns.

Calvin Klein represents the epitome of the late twentieth century artist/designer/corporate businessman. Klein is to Galliano as Warhol is to Michelangelo. As a Bill Gates of fashion, Klein's interest in clothes is as much dictated by a truly economic genius as an artistic one. His contribution to the fashion of the twentieth century simply cannot be ignored - even if in dollar terms alone. As a fashion tycoon and dresser of American society, he has constructed, in less than two decades, a billion-dollar empire selling mechandise ranging from ready-to-wear men's and women's fashions, safe conservative lines, and jeans, not missing underwear, eyewear and fragrances. His business/designer style has set a model for designers of similar interests to emulate. The Calvin Klein credo dictates that natures abhors a vacuum so if you find one, fill it before your competitors do.

Having recently been crowned by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) with the unprecedented dual honour of 'Designer of the Year' for both men's and women's wear, it looks as if no challenge is beyond the style-savy marketing master Calvin Klein. What's even more remarkable is that Calvin unifies these diverse products and markets with a resolve that is scarcely found in this business.

Calvin Klein is still youthful - a yuppie even - at fifty one. He is quoted as saying: "It's about modern. When you talk about my clothes, some people get it, and some don't." Modern may be interpreted in this case as applying to anyone whose lifestyle is caught up in the pre-millenium treadmill of work, play at work, and rest while thinking about work while driving home from work. Capturing a contemporary need for a uniform for the era, Calvin Klein claims to create clothes that meet the need with a perpetually evolving timelessness. Flashy colours are out, complicated shapes are out, frills and fuss are out. To be otherwise is uneconomic.

As the roles of the modern man and woman continue to converge, Klein sees American designers as the catalysts of this new practical, effortless style: "We are aware of how people live and what their needs are." With a new international press office in Milan, Calvin Klein is setting out to try to prove that his home-grown American style, has a global place in a world frantically copying American ideals.

Beginner's luck?

Like the striking black and white contrasts of Klein's celebrated ads, the difference between his current global-reaching success and his modest upbringing is like that between night and day. Born in 1942, Calvin Klein was a poor kid from the Bronx who dreamed of creating his own line of clothing someday: "Since the age of five, I've known I wanted to design clothes and have my own business." A man firmly anchored in his past, even the origins of his purist style hark back to the childhood influence of his mother: "My mother is the one who very early instilled in me a passion for white. When I was a child she always dressed in white."

After graduating from The Fashion Institute of Technology in 1962, Klein began an apprenticeship in a coat and suit house. Then, thanks to a $10,000 loan from his childhood friend Barry Schwartz, Klein opened up his own coat business. Strangely enough, his lucky break came when a buyer from Bonwit Teller happened to step off the lift onto the wrong floor of the York Hotel and walked into Klein's coat studio. Impressed with what he had stumbled upon, the buyer ended up placing a $50,000 coat order. Soon after that fortunate mishap, the press and business associates convinced Klein to expand his business to include sportswear.

Yes. Beginner's Luck.

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