Calvin Klein is one of the world's most successful fashion designers. He is noted for the long clean lines of his clothes and has often been referred to as the master of minimalism. He is also known as the creator of a range of classic perfumes.
Calvin Richard Klein was born on November 19, 1942, in the Bronx in New York City. His parents were Jewish Hungarian immigrants and were not rich, but he had a comfortable childhood and was always highly motivated, teaching himself to sketch and sew. He attended the New York High School of Industrial Art and Design and won a place at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. There he caught the attention of Vogue editor Baron de Gunzburg, who admired his work but also gave him the aggressive criticism he needed to improve it.
In 1968, Klein set up his own clothing company, Calvin Klein Ltd., along with his friend Barry Schwartz, and they opened a coat shop in NYC's York Hotel. A representative from the exclusive clothing store Bonwit Teller visited the place by accident after getting out of an elevator on the wrong floor and immediately fell in love with their work, ordering $50,000 worth of goods. This helped them to launch themselves into the big time, and soon Klein's designs were featuring in magazines such as Harper's & Queen. He enjoyed successful shows at New York Fashion Week and was referred to as the new Yves Saint-Laurent.
Having achieved this initial success, Klein decided to branch out and develop lines of women's clothing, sportswear, lingerie, and jeans. The latter were the first ever range of designer jeans to be marketed at prices affordable to the masses. Promoted using a series of controversial adverts which featured the adolescent Brooke Shields, they became a massive success. Klein followed this with the introduction of a men's underwear range modeled by Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Sabato Jr., which turned around attitudes to such clothing and transformed it from a mere practicality to something perceived as sexy.
During the 70s and 80s, Klein introduced a range of perfumes, which have come to be considered classics, such as Eternity and Obsession. His company continued to grow during the early 80s but then ran into financial problems and came very close to collapse. It was by concentrating on his perfume and underwear lines that Klein managed to turn its fortunes around again. His unisex scents CK One and CK Be proved enormously successful. However, in 2002 he sold the company to the Phillips Van Heusen Corporation, and has since remained creative head of the clothing ranges that bear his name, but has had increasingly less personal involvement.
Klein has received numerous awards for his work. He won the Coty Award in 1973, 1974, and 1975, and was named America's Best Designer in 1993. He is a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and has several A-list celebrity clients, including Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Moss. His personal life has also revolved around celebrity, despite his dislike of getting personal with the press. In his early days he frequently partied at Studio 54 with the likes of Andy Warhol. He has been married once, to Kelly Klein, and is now divorced with a daughter, Marci.
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