Calvin Klein

From the clean-cut coats and suits that launched Calvin Klein’s career to the architectural designs of Francicso Costa, the Calvin Klein label has become synonymous with streamlined clothes, muted color palettes, and an apparent simplicity of design. These elements comprise fashion designer Calvin Klein’s unified vision. His label is an American lifestyle brand, and Klein has earned his reputation as “the supreme master of minimalism.”

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, native New Yorker Calvin Klein founded his company in December 1967. While Klein’s first success was with his coats and suits, he quickly broadened his repertoire by designing sophisticated “no-frills” American sportswear. He is known for using luxurious fabrics in subdued colors. His signature looks include the pea coat, day-into-night dressing, t-shirts adapted for evening wear, and the slip dress. “I’ve always had a clear design philosophy and point of view about being modern, sophisticated, sexy, clean and minimal. They all apply to my design aesthetic,” he recalled.

Klein’s controversial advertising campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s also put him at the center of American cultural life. His 1980 jean campaign aggressively championed gender and sexuality, and featured fifteen-year-old model Brooke Shields suggestively admitting that nothing came between her and her Calvins. During the 1990s, provocative ads featuring Kate Moss and Mark Walberg further added to the company’s visibility, by associating the Calvin Klein label with iconic sexiness.

In 2001, Calvin Klein stepped down as creative director of his company and hired the Brazilian-born Francicso Costa as a designer. In 2003, Costa became Klein’s successor when he was named women’s creative director of the Calvin Klein Collection. Also a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Costa took Klein’s minimalist aesthetic in a new, but natural, direction. “For me minimalism is an exercise in reduction,” Costa explains. Subtracting collars, cuffs, and other superfluous details, Costa concentrated on darts and folds that sculpt the figure, resulting in architectural garments that re-defined the Calvin Klein look. It is “for me to take it forward . . . to look forward,” Costa says. “To look back and just copy something, then I am not doing my job. It's always about evolving, of creating a language even if you have no idea what it is.” Costa left Calvin Klein in 2016.