Who is Calvin Klein. Calvin Klein - biography and personal life. Calvin Klein's personal life

1. Calvin Klein was born on November 19, 1942 in the New York Bronx to a family of Hungarian Jews who immigrated to the United States. His grandmother worked as a dressmaker, and thanks to her, Klein learned to sew.

2. Calvin Klein graduated from the Graduate School of Art and Design and the Institute of Fashion Technology. In 2003, he was named his honorary doctor.

3. In 1964, Klein married Jane Senter. The designer's first marriage lasted 10 years and ended in a scandalous breakup.

4. In 1968, Calvin Klein founded Calvin Klein Inc with an initial capital of $ 10,000. Childhood friend Barry Schwartz gave Klein the money.

5. Initially, only men's clothing was produced under the Calvin Klein brand. After rave reviews from the fashion press (in 1969, Klein appeared on the pages of American Vogue), the designer decided to supplement the collection with a women's line of clothing and lingerie.

6. Klein was the first to introduce the men's double-breasted coat in the women's wardrobe. He was the first to create a collection of women's underwear, in which he adapted men's boxers with a wide elastic band.

7. In 1973, Klein received the prestigious Coty American Fashion Critics Award and became the youngest designer ever to receive the award. Subsequently, Klein received the Coty Award twice: in 1974 and in 1975.

10. Calvin Klein's daughter Marcy is a renowned television producer and four-time Emmy Award winner. She is a co-producer of one of the most popular US television shows Saturday Night Live on NBC.

11. In 1986, Klein married a second time to an employee of his company, photographer Kelly Rector. However, this marriage lasted long enough: the couple divorced in 2006.

12. After breaking up with his second wife, Calvin Klein announced his homosexuality. Until 2012, he dated porn star Nick Gruber, who was 48 years younger than Klein.

- a world famous celebrity, a favorite of women and even men, the owner of a model house, whose logo has been a guarantee of the quality and prestige of clothing for several decades. Wearing jeans and underwear from Calvin Klein is not only fashionable, but also very comfortable and convenient.

Calvin Klein: biography

Born into a Jewish family, the boy could hardly imagine becoming the most famous American fashion designer in the world.


Calvin Klein was born on November 19, 1942 in the Bronx, then a suburb of New York. His father belonged to the middle class, was a private entrepreneur, which by the standards of the middle of the last century was a considerable achievement that allowed the family to lead a fairly measured and prosperous lifestyle.


Thanks to the income from the entrepreneurial business, the young Kelvin was able to get a good education at the Graduate School of the Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.


The knowledge gained helped Calvin Klein very soon gain a reputation as a good artist and a good beginner designer. A graduate of the fashion university begins to be invited to work in a variety of fashion houses in New York, sometimes Kelvin worked part-time as a street artist, gaining invaluable experience in observing how people dress, as well as how clothes affect their social status and position. in society. This continued until 1968, it was in this year that Calvin Klein founded a joint venture with Barry Schwartz, a friend of the designer's childhood and youth, called "Calvin Klein, Ltd".


Initially, the company was engaged in the development and production of new models of clothing for men, gradually retraining to produce clothing for women, as the most profitable in terms of demand and consumption.


Very quickly, the company recouped the investment and began to bring in considerable profits, an indicator of its recognition in the modeling business was the three annual Coty awards presented in a row from 1973 to 1975.


Since 1978, Calvin Klein has been launching designer jeans; before him, no designer dared to bring jeans to the catwalk, considering this type of clothing intended exclusively for wearing by the lower strata of the population. Soon jeans with the Klevin Klein label became one of the most fashionable and expensive things, of those that should be in the wardrobe of every woman and man. The firm's success has been overwhelming.

Calvin Klein: personal life


In the personal life of Calvin Klein, very significant changes are also ripe, after the collapse of the first marriage, which did not last long, the designer married a second time, this event happened in 1986. The second marriage proved to be more successful, but also ended in divorce in 2006. Kelvin's first wife was Jane Senter, young people got married in 1966, a daughter, Marcy, was born from this marriage, his second wife was Kelly Rector, she was a personal assistant to the designer. After the collapse of the second marriage, the public for a long time gossiped about the unconventional orientation of the fashion designer, later rumors were confirmed, the fashion star for two whole years from 2010 to 2012 met with porn actor Nick Gruber. The union fell apart due to the latter's addiction to drugs.

Calvin Klein: career


Calvin Klein's career, which began so long ago, still attracts the attention of reporters and even competent authorities. The ideas that come to mind of this extraordinary person sometimes shock the public more than the speeches of politicians. The first known scandal is connected with the advertisement of a new model of jeans, according to the designer's idea, huge banners were hung all over New York, depicting the characters of the painting "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci in fashionable jeans. The poster was called "The Last Supper from Klein", the effect of its appearance exceeded any expectations of advertisers, and even Klein himself, who had to pay the church a fair amount of money as compensation for moral damage. Another scandal happened due to the release of new models of children's underwear, the advertising of which seemed more than frivolous.


In 2003, the shirt company Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation acquired Calvin Klein's company for almost half a billion dollars, while in our time the company is already valued at more than three dozen billion dollars.

Celebrity biographies

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22.05.15 13:13

Remember the curiosity from the cult comedy "Back to the Future"? Marty McFly's young mother (during the hero's journey into the past) saw the inscription on his panties and began to call the "alien" Calvin Klein? At the time when this movie was filmed, the fashion designer was at the peak of popularity. Calvin Klein's biography is like the embodiment of the notorious American dream ...

Biography of Calvin Klein

If you have both talent and perseverance

He was born into a poor Jewish family living on the outskirts of the Big Apple in the Bronx. The father, a small businessman, named his son, who was born on November 19, 1942, Calvin Richard. The boy showed artistic inclinations early (he drew really well, this skill came in handy later, when Kelvin had to earn extra money with street portraits). Therefore, as a teenager, he became a student at the Higher School of Art, and after that, the creative biography of Calvin Klein continued at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

For almost six years, the future famous couturier wandered from one New York fashion designer to another, but the role of an assistant did not suit the ambitious guy. “I really like that in our country everyone has a chance to fly very high if you have the talent and are ready to work hard,” Klein himself later said. He took full advantage of this chance, because the novice designer was not lacking in perseverance and hard work (as well as the talent bestowed from above).

Lady Luck

And also our hero, as they say, smiled at the Lady Luck herself. When Kelvin, in coordination with his friend Barry Schwartz, sewed the first collection, he received permission to display it in a large hotel building. There was also a luxury boutique (but on a different floor). Somehow, its director made the wrong floor and saw Klein's work. The businessman really liked the models of the young designer, he immediately placed an order for a large amount. However, maybe this is just a legend?

Jeans on the runway!

When Klein had money, he was seriously whirled by the bohemian maelstrom. He became friends with Andy Warhol, was a regular at the controversial nightclub "Studio 54", drank a lot and experimented with illegal psychotropic substances. Already in adulthood, he himself will call these years of burning life "crazy." But even in times of serious spree, the fashion designer did not stop working. Couturier jeans in the late 1970s became wildly popular - before him, representatives of "Haute Couture" considered denim clothing quite plebeian. Klein drew on young talent Brooke Shields as a model and came up with a sexy ad with the slogan "There is nothing between me and my jeans!" He was almost reproached for child pornography, but the success was evident!

Preaching unisex

After treatment in a specialized center, the "crazy years" came to an end. The fashion designer settled down. But the recipe for success left the same - in the early 1990s, the heroes of his new advertising posters were half-naked Kate Moss and rapper Mark Mark (future Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg). They were slim, young, and both wore Klein's clothes.

It turns out that Klein became the ideological successor of the couturiers who preached unisex. The youth met this idea of ​​the master with enthusiasm, it turned out that jeans, jackets, caps from Calvin Klein can be worn by both girls and boys. The adults again shook their fingers at the cheeky designer. They still remembered the American for his courage: in 1995, teenage posters and videos advertising the master's clothes were banned. And four years later, posters showing a new line of teenage underwear were called too frivolous. He just always knew how to "keep his nose to the wind" and knew what the public wanted from him.

By the 2000s, he had played enough of these games, and a new round occurred in the biography of Calvin Klein: the couturier sold his company. The deal was not cheap: $ 430 million.

Calvin Klein's personal life

The first pancake is lumpy

When the fashion designer got married (in 1964), his bohemian lifestyle could not but affect his relationship with his wife Jane. True, they tried to be exemplary parents for their daughter Marcy. But ten years later, a divorce followed. A few years later, Marcy will survive the terrible: she was kidnapped and demanded a ransom, but everything ended well.

20 years of marriage and ... young boyfriends

In 1986, the master played a wedding again, but evil tongues did not calm down, claiming that he just wanted to hide his homosexuality. The second wife of the fashion designer was his assistant Kelly Rector. Calvin Klein's personal life seemed cloudless then. Together with his young wife, he settled in a new mansion on the coast. Bad habits were eliminated: they were replaced by swimming and jogging on the beach. Kelvin lived with Kelly for a long time, but having celebrated the 20th anniversary of his marriage, he put an end to it. And later it turned out that the scandalous fashion designer really had boyfriends. Among them - a young guy-model Nick Gruber ...

7 chose

Among ordinary people, his name is everyday, among the bigwigs of the show and fashion industries - an indispensable scandal. His life is like a "roller coaster", but at the same time he managed to reach such heights that today in the United States there is a joke: "Calvin Klein is a genetic memory." Hollywood stars adore him. He is considered one of the most influential people in the world. And today he turns 68 ...

Name - Calvin Richard Klein
Date of BirthNovember 19, 1942
Place of BirthBronx, New York, USA
Professionfashion designer
A familydivorced; daughter Marcy
Eye color - gray-blue
Hair colorfair-haired

Calvin Richard Klein.

Who would have thought in the distant war 1942 that the second son of the Kleins, Hungarian Jewish emigrants, Kelvin Richard, was destined to become great.

Although when the question "What do you want to do in life?" little Kelvin replied: "Sew clothes", no one was surprised. Since childhood, the boy was surrounded by female attention and spent his days in a textile store, where his grandmother Molly worked, and his mother Flor worked as a dressmaker. Therefore, Kelvin was familiar with young nails with what patterns are and "what they are eaten with".

Such a hobby did not evoke warm feelings and responses from his peers - the boy was a constant object of ridicule. Kelvin's only friend during this period was Barry Schwartz.

After high school, Kelvin was determined to pursue a design education. And so he enters the New York Graduate School of Industrial Design. It should be noted that Klein's teachers did not even suspect that among their students there was a genius, considering Kelvin a rather mediocre fashion designer. But after school, the future star continues her studies and goes to the New York Institute of Technology for Fashion, during her studies in which, in order to somehow make ends meet, she moonlights as a street artist.

Klein's first place of work "in profile" was the position of an assistant at the New York clothing center. But routine and meager salary did not dispose to continue a career there.

1964 brought changes to Kelvin's life in his personal life - Klein married his girlfriend Jane Center, who gave birth to his daughter Marcy. But after 10 years the marriage will break up and in 1986 his assistant Kelly Rector will become Kelvin's wife, with whom the designer will live until 1997.

The next round in Kelvin's career happened when the future couturier almost despaired of realizing himself as a creative person. But thanks to his father, who found words and encouraged his son in a difficult period, and his devoted friend Barry Schwartz, who believed in his talent and strength and found money, the brand was created Calvin klein.

The models of the new brand were distinguished by simple cut and restrained colors, which later became the brand's trademark.

For the first models of women's coats, the sketches sketched by Kelvin at previous jobs and rejected by the employer were very useful.

Mr. Klein received his first major order ... by accident. It was all the fault of the buyer's inaccurately written address for a large department store: he made the wrong floor, but when he saw Kelvin's models, he made an order for 50 thousand dollars.

Needless to say, how much this accident inspired Klein. New collections came out one after another. The designer worked around the clock. And the result was not long in coming: the collections dispersed with a bang, and in 1973 Kelvin was awarded his first design prize in his life. Coty Award.

It turned out to be not so profitable to create a coat. And jeans and ... a scandal became the real salvation of the fashion designer.

1978 year. The advertising campaign for the jeans collection, starring 13-year-old Brooke Shields, literally blew up the public. She was even honored with a discussion in Parliament. The fashion designer was accused of all deadly sins from the distribution of pornography to pedophilia. But the words that flew from the lips of a young nymphet: "Do you know what's between me and Calvin Klein jeans? Nothing!" did their job - sales were off the charts. And the jeans themselves were nicknamed "Kelvins".

In the same year, blackmailers kidnap Kelvin's daughter for ransom. But thanks to the empathy and support of the public, as well as the designer's willingness to hand over the ransom to the kidnappers, Marcy will be returned safe and sound.

After that, the scandal became an integral part of history. Calvin klein... The designer has repeatedly had to publicly apologize for the "ambiguity" of his images. But at the same time, collect an incredible harvest from sales.

The second milestone in Calvin Klein's career was men's underwear, which the fashion designer managed to elevate to the rank of not only a convenient accessory, but also an object of worship for all fashionistas. And what is typical, the maestro remained true to his principle - simplicity and brevity.

Now the concept of "unisex" is quite common and it is difficult to surprise. But it arose precisely thanks to Calvin Klein, who released the fragrance cK one and became the pioneer of such a market segment as "unisex" products. And played a big role here Kate moss, which became the personification of this phenomenon.

The fans of the brand are Sandra Bulock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Helen Hunt despite the fact that now Calvin Klein is no longer its owner.

The designer himself estimates his success this way: " I love simplicity. I like cleanliness. I love everything modern. But it should excite the imagination and be interesting. Fashion is changeable, but its philosophy remains unchanged for me: clothes should be truly modern and make a woman truly beautiful.".

Calvin Klein is a renowned American fashion designer. K. Klein was born on November 19, 1942 in the Bronx, in the family of an entrepreneur.

Kelvin's creativity manifested itself in his childhood. He entered the Graduate School of Art, which he graduated at the age of eighteen, after which he studied for a couple more years at the New York Institute of Fashion.

In 1964 Kelvin married J. Sente. The young couple had a daughter, Marcy, but the marriage did not last long - ten years later (in 1978) it broke up.

K. Klein's career began as an assistant to designer Dan Milstein. In the period from 1962 to 1968 K. Klein worked in various fashion houses in New York. From time to time he worked as a street artist.

Over time, the young designer decided to create his own clothing production. Together with his childhood friend Barry Schwartz, Kelvin created Calvin Klein Ltd. Initially, this company produced outerwear for men, and then took up the design of women's clothing. The new company succeeded quite quickly. In 1980, model Brooke Shields advertised the first Calvin Klein jeans. Two years later, the company established the production of men's underwear.

In 1989, Calvin Klein bought the perfume license. In 1992, the firm underwent a reorganization, in which the popular musician David Geffen took part. A year later, the public was presented with a budget version of Calvin Klein's fashionable clothing.

In 1995, Calvin Klein's main store opened in the Madison Avenue shopping center. In 1999, a store began operating in Kent, and then a boutique was opened in Manchester.

In the 2000s, Calvin Klein had to take part in a number of court proceedings. He took turns in litigation with his wife K. Rector, with the Warnaco Group, even with the Catholic Church. K. Klein entered the history of American fashion as a marketing genius, an acknowledged fashion master and charismatic image maker.

In the 1970s, K. Klein was the first fashion designer to seriously engage in the production of denim products. After the expansion of the denim assortment and the scandalous campaign from fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields, the Calvin Klein brand became a real success. The brand's sales in the following year increased from twenty-five to one hundred and eighty million dollars.

Scandalous advertising campaigns have become an integral part of Calvin Klein's professional image. In the 1980s, he shocked American fashion fans by creating a new trendy youth style - unisex. In advertising posters from the time, boys and girls wore the same denim by Calvin Klein. The idea of ​​unisex youth clothing was received “with a bang”, the youth literally swept away fashion items from the unisex collection from the store shelves.

K. Klein has always practiced an innovative approach to fashion. Not only did he come up with a unisex style, but he was also the first to decide to repaint jeans in black, as well as make them skinny. The success of the skinny denim models has been overwhelming. Jeans have experienced a new round of popularity - the new models not only looked great, but also fit perfectly on the figure.

The end of the 1980s was marked by unisex. Klein released fragrances for women and men and offered his clients models of women's underwear styled as boxers.

Calvin Klein literally lived in fashion, was obsessed with it. Having become one of the most famous designers in the United States, he did not lose interest in the development of new models, on the contrary, he tried to surpass himself. Huge efficiency, rich imagination, inexhaustible creative energy - all this helped the designer to release collections one after another, and each of his new line surpassed the previous one in success.

In the development and creation of fashionable clothes, K. Klein decided to focus on sexuality. He was right. Distinctive features of K. Klein's clothing models are minimalism, simple cut and bright sexuality. For sewing clothes, the designer uses the best fabrics: wool, natural cotton, etc., which makes his clothes beautiful, safe and comfortable. All items from Calvin Klein are luxury class.

Today Calvin Klein is more than just a name or brand. This is a whole fashion empire that has achieved success in Europe and America and is actively conquering the East, opening its fashion boutiques in Kuwait, Jakarta and Hong Kong. Calvin Klein's annual turnover is $ 5 billion today.

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