What Comes Between Us And Our Calvin?

A New Book Explores the Man and the Brand Behind the Jeans

By CHRIS SCHMIDT

Calvin Klein's impact on popular consumer culture is perhaps best illustrated by a scene from the 1985 movie, "Back to the Future."

"I've never seen purple underwear before, Calvin," says a 1950s teenager to Michael J. Fox's time traveling character, Marty McFly.

"Calvin? Why do you keep calling me Calvin?" he responds.

"Well, that's your name, isn't it? Calvin Klein. It's written all over your underwear."

The story of how Mr. Klein convinced half of America to buy underwear with his name written all over it is at the heart of "The House of Klein: Fashion, Controversy, and a Business Obsession" (Wiley, $24.95) a new, unauthorized book by former New York Post writer Lisa Marsh, which hit bookstores last week.

The book is well timed, as Mr. Klein's name has been in the media frequently during the last year. In December of 2002, Mr. Klein sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen for $700 million.

Then, in March, Mr. Klein, who has publicly admitted his problems with addiction (in 1988, he checked into Minnesota's Hazelden rehab clinic), stumbled on to the court of a New York Knicks game and attempted to have words with Latrell Sprewell, who was about to throw a ball into play from out of bounds. The photograph of Mr. Klein, looking disoriented on the basketball court, was reprinted in papers around the country for days.

It wasn't surprising to see the designer's foibles taking center stage in a news story. Throughout the history of his company, sales of Calvin Klein merchandise have depended, to an unprecedented degree, on the designer's own image, as well as that on the provocatively sexy ad campaigns that he pioneered.

Mr. Klein's personal life has long intrigued his customers, from his salad days partying with Liza Minnelli and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54 to his mid-1980s marriage to his design assistant Kelly Rector.

And Mr. Klein's first incredibly successful fragrance, Obsession, played off of his own reputation for hedonism. Photographs advertising the fragrance featured androgynous nude models, male and female, in various athletic embraces. "When one makes love, there is a certain scent that we give off. I think it's very sensual -- that's the scent of Obsession," Mr. Klein told Time magazine at the time of Obsession's launch.

His next perfume, Eternity, which debuted not long after his marriage to Ms. Rector, saw him doing a complete reversal toward the culturally conservative, with an emphasis on the family. Mr. Klein landed on the name Eternity when buying a wedding ring for his wife that was formerly owned by the Duchess of Windsor, and called, following a British custom, the "eternity ring."

Advertisements for the new scent featured a young couple with two children, which supposedly reflected Mr. Klein's new commitment to family life. The image proved more durable than reality: Mr. Klein's commitment to the model, Christy Turlington, who after 16 years is still the face of the fragrance, outlasted his marriage. Mr. Klein and his wife split in 1996, although they remain friends.

But then Mr. Klein's ability to pick -- or create -- the next hot model has often been uncanny. First there was the young Brooke Shields, cooing into the camera, "You know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." The 1980 campaign doubled sales of Mr. Klein's jeans line, and, along with Gloria Vanderbilt, created the designer jeans phenomenon that's still with us today.

After Ms. Shields came Ms.Turlington, and then Kate Moss, who was an unknown British teenager before Mr. Klein brought her stardom as the controversial face and (bony) body of Calvin Klein clothing and underwear. Ms. Moss's slight frame prompted debates on eating disorders and the dangerous appeal of heroin chic, as New Yorkers famously painted "Feed Me" across bus and taxi advertisements featuring the model.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Klein courted controversy again by displaying young male models in provocative poses and skimpy clothing. He used rapper Mark Wahlberg's street cred to promote boxer-briefs to both straight and gay men. Later, model Joel West appeared in a Calvin Klein ad wearing nothing but Calvin Klein underwear, with his legs spread. The image angered Mr. Klein's underwear manufacturer, Warnaco, so much that the company's CEO, Linda Wachner, angrily told Women's Wear Daily at the time, "This ad was not approved by Warnaco. When I saw the original artwork, I said no!"

Ms. Marsh calls her book a "business biography," and as a former business reporter,she focuses mainly on the financial peccadilloes of the company.

The story of Calvin Klein, as with so many fashion corporations, is one of licensing out the manufacture of certain products -- underwear, jeans, accessories, home collections -- and then trying to wrestle back control of those licenses when they dilute the brand. Mr. Klein sued Warnaco in 2001, alleging that it had tarnished his trademark by selling clothes with the Calvin Klein label to discount chains. The lawsuit was settled, but revealed the decidedly unglamorous workings of a fashion house's licensing machine.

And though Mr. Klein stayed on at the company as creative director after the sale to Phillips-Van Heusen, Ms. Marsh reports in the book that tensions have already developed between Mr. Klein and executives at Phillips-Van Heusen over Mr. Klein's lack of involvement in the company.

Ms. Marsh leaves out other important business details, however. While she hints that Mr. Klein's antics on the Knicks court might negatively affect the viability of the brand bearing his name, she produces no comments from Phillips-Van Heusen on the issue, sales figures, or even speculation from industry experts on the future of the company.

Nor does Ms. Marsh provide the reader with much insight into the designer's character or personal life.

There are occasional touches that bring sudden life to her subject, such Mr. Klein's perfectionism, which led him to install in his headquarters' kitchen a Pantone chip of the color he preferred his coffee, so that assistants would never add too much or too little milk to his brew.

Ms. Marsh only skirts the issues in Mr. Klein's personal life that have helped to shape the popular perceptions of his brand, however. She mentions midway through the book that Mr. Klein has continually been "dogged by rumors about his sexuality, illnesses, illicit drug use, and shady business dealings."

But Ms. Marsh studiously avoids saying anything further about the rumors surrounding Mr. Klein's sexuality (although, oddly, on the penultimate page of the book, she suddenly quotes an anonymous source who describes Mr. Klein as "this gay kid from the Bronx").

This is, no doubt, the impetus behind a doubleentendre-laced blurb by Daily News and Hintmag.com gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe, which appears on the book's back cover.

"Calvin Klein found an opening in men's underwear and never looked back. Crack fashion scribe Lisa Marsh gets right there in the closet with him," Mr. Widdicombe wrote.