Who was the first – Calvin Klein or Jeans? Maybe they created each other? Anyway let’s start from the beginning: how did Calvin Klein serve jeans and how did cheap working clothes present the world one of the most famous fashion designers?

Ingredients:

• talent;
• persistence;
• luck;
• ability to anticipate people’s thoughts.

To cook Calvin Klein’s jeans we should take a talented boy Calvin Richard Klein who was born in Bronx, New York (definitely not the most fashionable place on Earth). This boy always knew what he wanted from life, that’s why Calvin enrolled to the High School of Art and Design and to the New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

One-by-one he mixed talent, persistence, luck and ability to anticipate people’s thoughts. For a while he worked for various fashion companies as a designer, besides that he was a painter, but in the age of 26 Mr Klein decided that he is ready to cook his own dish of success! He had no parents’ money to add to the recipe that’s why he borrowed the initial capital from his friend. As he had no plan B, Calvin clearly hoped for a miracle…

… and it happened! the first stage of cooking was very successful thanks to one happy occasion: Calvin presented his first collection in a hotel; one floor above it was a fashionable boutique; when its owner accidentally pressed the wrong button in the elevator… he saw Calvin Klein’s first collection… and paid $50 000 for the first order!

Despite the initial success Calvin didn’t relax, he started working even harder. He realized that a rich dish can be made out of simple, cheap ingredients and created one of the tastiest clothes in the world… jeans! To tell the truth it wasn’t Calvin who invented them, jeans were invented in the XVI century, but Calvin Klein served this dish in such a way that cheap work clothes turned into a fashionable garment. Besides that Calvin didn’t just show the world that jeans can be very fashionable, he also proved that they can be very sexy and provocative! At least it was the impression that people got from commercials which Calvin made for  his new product: “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins… nothing?” said 15-year-old Brooke Shields from billboards and TV-screens. While adults expressed their indignation, teenagers bought up “Calvins”. “Momma said he’s only interested in my Calvins”, “I’ve got seven Calvins in my closet, and if they could talk, I’d be ruined”. I bet Calvin Klein knew that teenagers wanted to put something provocative on!

Later he also cooked the “unisex” style that shook the world again: while parents protested against male clothes on half-naked young model Kate Moss, teenagers took up this revolutionary idea and multiplied Calvin Klein’s fortune.

The funny thing is: Calvin Klein didn’t create anything new: both jeans and male clothes existed before, he just offered the world an “old dish” in a fresh way!