Word: calvinized
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Minutes before the first model appeared on the runway at the Calvin Klein show during Fashion Week in New York City, an uncomfortable silence settled over the journalists, buyers and society figures assembled in a Chelsea photography studio. Standing in view of the crowd was Klein himself, surrounded by several p.r. handlers and the CEO of Phillips--Van Heusen, the giant shirt company that acquired Klein's label for $438 million earlier this year. Here was an icon of American fashion, the man who gave the world designer denim in the '70s and put underwear over...
...Fashion is not about frivolity and shock." American fashion, of course, has never been big on risk taking. Designers in the U.S. are predictable in their dedication to sportswear, leaving shock tactics to their European colleagues. Along with predictability comes safety, a belief that certain designers--the triumvirate of Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan--are fashion's bedrock. But all of a sudden there was a tectonic shift, as if Klein's departure left everything else on shifting sand...
Because these kids are permanently wired to the mother ship, Gordon and Lee can ping them at will with specific requests from clients. When Calvin Klein came to them with a list of possible names for a new fragrance targeted at young men, Look-Look could quickly run the list past 10,000 or so teenage eyeballs. (The eventual winner? "Crave.") "Before, you would have to just kind of guess, or you'd have to wait," says Lee, "but because we've built this huge network, we have the capability to test the hypothesis with any kind of sample size...
...Furstenberg's show at the presentations of the fall ready-to-wear collections in February was rare in that it featured at least half a dozen black and Asian models. Many of the other shows had only one model of color (usually Liya), while some, like Prada and Calvin Klein, had none...
Advertising is where models get the serious money, or as Iman calls it, "the spoils of war," but models who aren't white have a hard time getting companies to put them under contract. "Calvin Klein helped launch my career by putting me in ads," says Soto, "but he never put me under contract." She had similar experiences with cosmetics companies: they were happy to hire her on a job-to-job basis but, in contrast to the rewards given her white colleagues, never signed her to a contract. Companies are more likely to link their products to known personalities...