Calvin Klein Cast Kate Moss Because She Was 'Always Thin'

By Jenna Sauers  |  October 19, 2011 | 5:20pm
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Calvin Klein gave a rare public interview at 92Y this week, where he spoke with former head of New York fashion week Fern Mallis. The 68-year-old retired designer discussed addiction, his boyfriend, 21-year-old porn star Nicholas Gruber, Kate Moss, selling his company — and growing up in the same Bronx neighborhood as Ralph Lifshitz, who later made a name for himself as Ralph Lauren:

“Ralph always dressed in a peculiar way. I was the edgy one. I wanted to look like some kind of tough guy, like James Dean. And Ralph looked like he was from some other country.”

The two were not friends — Lifshitz was older — but Klein remembers him “distinctly.” Klein also says that there was a reason he chose a then-19-year-old Kate Moss to be the face of Calvin Klein underwear, and later the company’s Obsession perfume, in 1993 — he found her type of beauty more “natural” than that of the 80s supes:

“The reason for Kate and this whole group of women I found that someone named ‘waifs’ was because before that, a lot of women were getting breast implants and doing things to their buttocks. It was getting out of control. I just found something so distasteful about all that. I wanted someone who was natural, always thin.”

Of the drug-fueled 2003 incident when he wandered onto the court during a Knicks game and tapped player Latrell Sprewell on the shoulder, Klein says:

“That was really a shameful, horrible moment. It had nothing to do with work. I’ve done enough therapy and enough work on myself. Addiction is not caused by stress on the job, even though lots of people in the fashion industry have suffered from the same problem. It’s not about the work. It has more to do with your childhood and lots of other things. You’re always in recovery.”

Sounds like a veiled reference to John Galliano to our ears. And speaking of therapy, there’s this about his daughter, Marcy: “She was quoted in Time or Newsweek to something of the effect of, ‘Every time I go to bed with some guy, I’m looking at my dad’s name on their underwear.’ I said to my psychiatrist at the time, ‘I don’t think that’s very funny.’ And he said, ‘Lighten up.’” [WWD]

Here’s a first photo of Miranda Kerr wearing this year’s Victoria’s Secret Magical Sparkly Diamond Bra. [NYDN]

There is speculation that Karlie Kloss, who has modeled for VS Pink, will be cast in the Victoria’s Secret show. The model from St. Louis has been working since the age of 14, but now that she’s 19, Kloss has started doing some sexier editorials, like those Mario Testino-shot implied nudes for Allure. [Modelinia]

In other underthings news, Slovakian model Adriana Cernanova is the new “face” of Wonderbra. [Daily Mail]

Miu Miu cast model Guinevere Van Seenus as the face of its newest campaign. Van Seenus is 34; Miu Miu’s last face, actress Hailee Steinfeld, was famously (and controversially) 14. [Women Management]

Doo-Ri Chung is the next designer to sign on to do a collaboration with Macy’s. It’ll hit 225 Macy’s stores on February 15. [WWD]

Photos of Versace‘s men’s wear collection for H&M are now available. And, oh my God, you guys. This cannot be real. Is that a hot-pink leopard-print dude-sarong? [ONTD]

This year’s Neiman Marcus holiday catalog is here — just in case you needed a $250,000 mahogany speedboat, “an all-weather yurt with a luxurious custom interior starting at $75,000,” or a $1 million dancing fountain by the folks who did the water feature at the Bellagio. A while back, we actually wrote about Neiman’s habit of peppering its Christmas book with bizarre and extremely expensive fantasy gifts for Bookforum here. [WWD]

  • Amanda Seyfried performed stunts on her upcoming film In Time wearing “stunt heels.” Those sound cool, until you realize she just means heels that are half as high as the enormous platforms her character favors. You know — kitten heels. [People]
  • A New York judge has ruled that Courtney Love will have to pay for over $100,000 worth of diamond jewelry she borrowed last fall for a gala and never returned. Love, who was living at the Mercer hotel at the time, says she gave the diamonds to a hotel staff member, who lost them. [NYDN]
  • Christian Louboutin filed its first brief for its appeal of the ruling that found Yves Saint Laurent was not in violation of Louboutin’s trademarks for selling shoes with red soles. [WWD]
  • Vogue is putting together a nice video series about the selection of this year’s Vogue/Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Fund awardees. In this clip, the ten finalists — Suno, Fenton/Fallon, Finn, Cushnie et Ochs, Creatures of the Wind, Altuzarra, Carlos Campos, Ohne Titel, and Pamela Love — make their initial presentations to the judging panel, which includes Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, and Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler. [Vogue.com]
  • Scott Lipps, the head of modeling agency One Management, is filming a new reality series called Scouted. Bar Refaeli, whom One represents, will appear in one episode as a “mentor” to the young girls on the show. [P6]
  • Carine Roitfeld, on the magazine she wants to launch: “I’ve used a lot of cigarettes, a lot of sexy pictures, a lot of naked girls. I will try to do something totally different now, because I don’t want to get bored of myself or to bore my readers.” What is Carine without cigarettes and boobs? Quelle horreur! Asked about Vogue Paris, where she was deposed earlier this year, she says, “I am not really looking to the past or what others are doing.” [Fashionologie]
  • Meanwhile, Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld was profiled in the Observer. This is money: “A quick peek into his fridge reveals bottles of Veuve Clicquot and ketchup, while a stack of airplane sleep masks sits on the kitchen counter.” [NYObs]
  • Olivia Palermo name-drops her website ten times in this 810-word, eight-question interview. That’s an almost unprecedented rate of self-promotional babble to regular promotional babble! In four of her answers, Palermo manages to name-check her site twice. Yet, strangely, at the clutch moment when we went to type in the string of html code that renders in plaintext on the site as a “link,” we seem to have…forgotten the site name. [Exposed Zippers]
  • And now, a moment with, um, us. We covered the opening of Uniqlo‘s biggest-ever store, the 89,000-square-foot behemoth that now resides at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, for the New York Observer. Uniqlo is opening a third U.S. store, its second-largest worldwide, on Friday. It’s part of a major global expansion that multi-billionaire Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai hopes will make him the head of the world’s largest apparel retailer by 2020. Seriously — he wants to quintuple the size of his company (by annual revenue, to $50 billion) and quadruple it (by store count, to 4,000+) over the next nine years. Asia is the top priority, but these people want to put a Uniqlo in every major U.S. city. For now, here’s something funny that happened at the opening:
  • Stage left, Robert Tagliapietra, the more talkative half of the fashion house Costello Tagliapietra, was standing next to his husband, Jeffrey Costello. For the past two years, they have produced a few summer dresses for Uniqlo’s series of limited-duration designer collaborations. (The last batch retailed for $29.99.) “They’re an incredible company to work with,” said Mr. Tagliapietra. “They’re so meticulous. It’s pretty incredible that they’re able to do what they do at their price point.” As he was talking about meticulousness, a large nail fell out of an exposed ceiling duct and onto Mr. Costello’s shoulder. Mr. Costello picked it up and inspected it. Mr. Tagliapietra glanced at the nail, and decided to continue. “They really respect design.”
  • [NYObs]

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