Obsession: The Lives and Times of Calvin Klein

by Steven Gaines

For more than a quarter century Calvin Klein, one of the most brilliant and honored designers in the world, has attracted an enormous following and unparalleled curiosity. The genius behind a $2-billion-a-year fashion empire, Klein is one of the greatest trendsetters and most recognizable celebrities of our time. His quintessentially American styles, his controversial erotic advertising, and his trademark on jeans, underwear, and fragrances have made his name known around the world. Yet the private man behind the dazzling image has until now remained a mystery.

With Obsession, bestselling author Steven Gaines and investigative reporter Sharon Churcher trace Calvin Klein’s steady rise from a modest background in the Bronx to his $5-million beach-front mansion in East Hampton. This is a compulsively readable tale of fashion, power, and self-creation – a riveting business story of an ambitious man who scaled his way to the top of New York’s cutthroat garment industry, building an influential and far-reaching financial kingdom. The result of years of research and more than a thousand candid interviews with intimates, lovers, and business associates, Obsession also brims with personal revelations, many as shocking as they are fascinating.

With extraordinary and unprecedented detail, the authors chronicle the collapse of Klein’s first marriage, his glittering nights at that paradigm of seventies discos, Studio 54, his weekend escapes in the summer mecca of the Fire Island Pines, the terrifying kidnapping of his daughter, Marci, and the inside story of his secret romantic obsessions and his alcohol and drug abuse. Here, too, is the story of his marriage to Kelly Klein and their refined, redefined lifestyle.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

There is significant indication that fashion designer Calvin Klein was attracted to and had relationships with people of multiple genders.