Calvin klein biography wikipedia search

The playing with fabrics and their erotic possibilities that was so critical to the ready-to-wear fashion also cropped up in the marketing of the jeans—Klein’s first masterstroke of many as an advertiser. “The first thing we did were those Brooke Shields commercials,” he says, “and they caught on like crazy.” I’ll say. It’s difficult to think of another series of ads that kicked up as big a brouhaha as did Richard Avedon’s 1980 TV commercial featuring a 15-year-old Shields looking directly into the camera and asking, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” Nearly 30 years later it’s not difficult to understand why this ad—in which Shields was dressed in a loose charmeuse shirt, which Klein describes as “the color of liquid,” and a pair of his jeans—created such a kerfuffle. This was an early iteration of the fashion world’s now perennial theme of the girl-woman, both innocent and sexual. (The fact that Shields had played a pre-pubescent prostitute in Louis Malle’s film Pretty Baby a couple of years earlier surely added fuel to the fire.) The other commercials in the series continued to pivot on double entendres—in one, Shields recites a monologue about genes; in another, she defines what it means to be “Calvinized.” All of that imagery became “indelible,” as Shields herself says. “There was an iconic tone to it,” the actress notes. “I don’t think you can really know that at the time, because it feels like that type of vision is after the fact. But [the response] was immediate. It was me and the jeans. We were inseparable. I didn’t do a television show without that being in my bio. I didn’t go on the street without somebody saying, ‘Got your Calvins on?’ People still come up to me and mention it.”

The images and the surrounding controversies got both actress and designer on the cover of People magazine in 1982; the designer took her for a celebration party at Studio 54. She remembers him being very protective of her.

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American fashion designer (born 1942)

This article is about the fashion designer. For his company, see Calvin Klein (fashion house).

Calvin Richard Klein (born November 19, 1942) is an American fashion designer who launched the company that later became Calvin Klein Inc., in 1968. In addition to clothing, he also has given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewellery.

Early life and career

Klein was born on November 19, 1942, to an Austro-Hungarian Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Flore (née Stern; 1909–2006) and Leo Klein. Leo was born in Boiany then in Austria-Hungary now in Ukraine and had immigrated to New York, while Flore was born in the United States to immigrants from Galicia and Bukovina, Austria-Hungary (modern day-Ukraine).

Klein went to Isobel Rooney Middle School 80 (M.S.80) as a child. He attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and attended New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, leaving for six months after his first year before returning to finish his degree. He received an honorary doctorate from FIT in 2003. He did his apprenticeship in 1962 at an old line cloak-and-suit manufacturer, Dan Millstein, and spent five years designing at other New York City shops. In 1968, he launched his first company with his childhood best friend,Barry K. Schwartz.

He became a protégé of Baron de Gunzburg,

(1942-)

Who Is Calvin Klein?

Calvin Klein studied fashion in New York City and apprenticed for a suit manufacturer. In 1968, he and Barry Schwartz opened their own company, with Schwartz running the business side of things and Klein responsible for design and artistic vision. The label was initially recognized for suits and coats, but Klein's sportswear line became popular as well. He received three Coty Awards for womenswear and the business eventually expanded to include menswear, jeans, cosmetics, fragrances and home collections. Having sold the company in 2003, Klein has also been the force behind model/celebrity-oriented ads that have become iconic parts of pop culture while simultaneously provoking much controversy and debate due to their provocative nature.

Early Life

Calvin Richard Klein was born on November 19, 1942, in the Bronx, New York, the middle child of two siblings. His father, originally from Hungary, owned a family grocery store in Harlem while his mother was a homemaker who took great delight in visiting her divorced mother’s tailoring shop, helping to give shape to Klein’s love of clothes and design. A driven youth, he started working on fashion sketches before his adolescence and eventually attended the High School of Industrial Arts and the Art Students League. He went on to graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1963.

Iconic Brand

Klein worked in various industry jobs before starting his own label. In 1968, he and his childhood friend Barry Schwartz became business partners when Schwartz took over his own family grocery business and gave Klein $10,000 to start the label. Renting a small showroom, Klein was eventually able to secure a deal with the department store Bonwit Teller after a chance encounter with one of its buyers. With the exposure provided by Teller and consumer demand, Klein was able to secure millions in sales by the early ‘70s.

Having initially focused on women’s coats and coordinates,