CALVIN KLEIN: HERO

That's Calvin Klein above, wearing one of his famous tee shirts. 

Klein had the smarts to realize that every man wanted a form-fitting tee shirt like Brando had in "Streetcar Named Desire." Actually, even Brando didn't have a tee shirt like that. The one he wore in the movie had to be pinned back. Anyway, Klein turned out great tee shirts for years til he sold the company and the new owner allowed the quality to deteriorate.

Calvin Klein was a hero. He was the first to make sophisticated design accessible to the common man. His clothes sold at Macy's for Pete's sake, and were only a little more than twice the normal price. In the world of fashion that's still dirt cheap. That means that anyone with a job could afford them, as long as they were willing to skimp on something else.

Actually, when you think about it, designer jeans had to sell for more than normal jeans. They could only sell to a limited market of reasonably fit people because there's just too many variations of  plump and pulpy. Also a lot of advertising was needed to launch the idea. 

The hippies hated Klein. For them, plain old Levis 501's represented the ideal of the classless society...any tinkering was the work of the devil. They were right in one way, but wrong in another. Status seeking is a fundamental part of human nature.You can't eliminate it, you can only hope to take the most harmful edges off it. By making fashion available to everyone, Klein created a new version of the classless society, one which persists right up to the present. 

Gee, all this talk about fashion calls to mind my own struggle with it. Here's (above) a low-priced shirt I bought in 2011 and have worn only once.  It's horribly shapeless, the fabric doesn't hang naturally, the collar doesn't cling to the neck and shoulders, and it's mostly cotton, so it requires ironing. The collar and sleeve sizes are correct but nothing else is.

Here's (above) a designer shirt I bought way back in 1984, and have worn continuously since. It has a nice shape, the fabric hangs naturally, the collar clings to the neck and shoulders as it should, and it's a polyester/rayon blend that requires no ironing. Don't be deterred by the polyester...all polyesters and rayon are not made the same. This fabric breathes almost as well as cotton.

The shoulders are reinforced for shape, but the soft three-part reinforcement (I'm pointing to it) still allows the fabric to hang naturally. It only cost twice as much as the checkered shirt I never wear. My only regret is that I didn't buy five of these when I had the chance.