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Source: New York Fashion by Caroline Reynolds Milbank
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W Magazine
All content copyright 1997 Sheiglagh©
Last updated 15 Oct 1997 Sheiglagh©
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Calvin Klein graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1962 at the age of twenty and then worked five years for the Seventh Avenue manufacturer Dan Misstein. When he started his own business in 1968, he concentrated at first on coats, and by 1969 had landed one cover of Vogue. As of 1971 he had began to experiment with sportswear, designing coatdresses, often in knits, hot-pants turnouts, jumpsuits, and classic blazer pantsuits that all shared certain constants of man-tailoring, notably in the way shirts, jackets, and pants were cut and in the use of topstitching. He did not neglect coats; these were available in a range from very casual, made in poplin lined with gingham, to dressier, in tweeds, to almost formal, in suede trimmed with fox. In 1973, the year he won the first three consecutive Coty awards, Calvin Klein emerged as a top designer who had his finger on the pulse of American women. Having learned, while touring the country, that women were becoming more name-concious and wanted to be able to buy all their clothes from a single designer, he worked with the concept of a wardrobe of interrelated pieces. One such grouping, all in the favorite 1970s beige, was composed of silk evening pants, tank top, shirt jacket, daytime trousers, cardigan sweater, polo shirt, and coat. With various combinations of these items a woman could be dressed for any occasion. Although Klein designed dresses, like his 1973 strapless tube of black matte jersey, most of his evening looks reamined fairly casual. Two-piece dresses were made in silk charmeuse in lustrous pale tones of beige and burgundy or navy and brown. Often these dresses featured wrapped blouses, who decolletage the wearer could adjust to suit her preference. The pieces that wrapped were held in place by a soft suede belt edged with brass beading or by wider cummerbunds of woven webbing. By 1975 Calvin Klein had become a celebrity, and he changed his somewhat homespun earlier image (a 1973 advertisement quoted him as saying about his new collection, "I made a lot of things that go with things.") for a more glamorous one. His advertisements began to feature photographs by Chris Von Wangenheim, Deborah Turbeville, and Guy Bourdin, who shot a 1976 ad that showed a Calvin Klein silk blouse on a wire hanger, with label visible at the back of the neck, hanging next to a mirror in which a nude woman was reflected. More and more, Calvin Klein was trading on the idea that the appeal of his clothes, simple as they were, lay in the attitude of the wearer, who affected their look by how far she unbuttoned her shirt, or what she wore--or didn't wear-- underneath her silk slide of a dress or her Calvin Klein jeans (his 1980 television ads starring Brooke Shields would be notorious). For more discussion on Calvin Klein please click on the accompanying photos. |