Calvin Klein's ex-wife helped him create his book

2 November 2017

Calvin Klein's ex-wife Kelly Rector encouraged him to write his first ever book 'Calvin Klein'.

Calvin Klein

The 74-year-old fashion designer has revealed his former partner - who the mogul was married to for 10 years from 1986 before they split in 1996 - urged him to create his own text because she felt it was "important" for Calvin to release a book before anyone else did on his behalf, which he would "hate".

The creative mastermind - who launched his eponymous label in 1968 - told The Hollywood Reporter: "Many times Kelly said she felt it was important that I do this book. I've spent a great deal of time lately speaking at universities - to fashion people, business people, marketing students - and wherever I go in the world, they know the name and the brand, but I've been talking about how we did it, how we got there, and what we did. Kelly finally said, 'If you don't do [a book], someone else will, and you will hate it.'"

And the businessman - who has 50-year-old son Marci with his first wife Jayne Centre - has revealed he asked for Kelly's help when he started working on the book, named after himself, which the pair spent "three years" creating.

He explained: "I realised she's absolutely right, but I said, 'Will you help me?' We spent more than three years working together on it. It was great to work with her again, as we did many years ago; we shared the excitement of going through all the photographs and retelling all of these stories."

Calvin has revealed his biggest "fear" when he was compiling the imagery for 'Calvin Klein' was that it may be "dated".

Speaking about his concern surrounding his latest venture, he said: "That was my fear when I was working on the book: Would I feel that the photos we did for all those years, would they feel dated? But after the first two months [of working on the book], I was getting really excited about the process. If I were designing today, I could easily run many of the images that we produced back in the '70s, '80s and '90s. We purposely juxtaposed different photos from different decades opposite each other. The vision is the same, regardless of photographer."