Mr. Calvin Klein Talks His Design Legacy and More!

20:03Nicole Phelps:I did. I studied design in high school too. I went to a school that's in New York. It's called Art and Design.

20:16Nicole Phelps:And that's where I began studying fashion, actually. New York's a wonderful place to grow up. I mean, I know so many people who have come here, but being born here, you are immersed in a language and a culture that exists nowhere else. And even in schools, we started thinking about the future very early on.

20:49Calvin Klein:What do they say about New York that once you live here, everywhere else is a joke? It's not serious compared to New York.

20:59Nicole Phelps:No, I don't know about that, but I always love coming back and have traveled a lot, mostly for work. But this city was a wonderful place to come back to. And for me, because like the work we did, it changed all the time. And I notice it now. There's building everywhere. It's constantly getting better as the city gets older.

21:33Calvin Klein:So at FIT, you took some time off. You worked at Women's Wear Daily. I did. You were a page boy, a copy boy. What does a copy boy do?

21:44Nicole Phelps:Page boy, I think, is in the theater. Copy boy delivers the mail. It's as simple as that. But you're surrounded by people in the business you want to be in. So it's just you just soak it up. It was a wonderful experience. I mean, I worked with, at a time when they were really exciting people, John Fairchild, who was the son of the man who started Fairchild Publications, which owned at that time Women's Wear Daily. John was a real influence. He was—people wanted to know what he was interested in, what restaurants he went to for lunch, where he would go on vacation. Women's Wear Daily, while it's just a trade newspaper, had a lot of influence on very sophisticated people in this country.

22:57Calvin Klein:It's where I got my start in fashion. I was Etta Froyo's assistant, and I remember my early days in fashion and feeling it was the most glamorous place in the world because the W Magazine staff was right, you know, smashed up with us on that newsroom on 34th Street. And I remember very well, we used to call you the big three, you, Ralph, and Donna. Donna. Yeah.

23:26Nicole Phelps:That was a fun place to work. And I worked there when Etta was there. I mean, she was there forever. And she was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Then I went back to school, took a really nice break, one of the few breaks ever, and back to school. And then started working on 7th Avenue. It was interesting because in my time, a lot of people that I went to school with wanted to work in Paris. That was the thing, to live in Paris, to work in Paris, which oddly enough never interested me. I like going there. I love visiting. I have great admiration and always have for what French designers did and do today.

24:31Nicole Phelps:But I was influenced by American women. And it seemed to me this was the place to be.

24:42Calvin Klein:I've heard you say that Claire McArdle, an American designer who was active after World War II, was an early inspiration on you.

24:52Nicole Phelps:Well, her work was sportswear, which was new because out of Europe, there were dresses, coats. It was more grown-up clothing. Sportswear was kind of an American thing. It was more relaxed, casual clothes for women who lived a certain way. In design school in Europe, you learn to design back then for women above the table, it was called, because women sat and had lunch or dinner, didn't do much else. And the design was noticed from above the table.

25:45Calvin Klein:I think we call those going out tops now.

25:49Nicole Phelps:Well, in New York, there were women who lunched, but the women who really impressed me and influenced me were the ones who were busy working. Donna Karan made her whole career on that, the working woman thing. And I think American designers were influenced by American women and still are.

26:23Calvin Klein:So let's talk about that early collection of yours. You have a day job on 7th Avenue. As you said, maybe you didn't like it that much. You really had an itch to try something of your own. And you created this collection of samples of coats and dresses, I believe. Yes. And there is a story that Bonwit Teller's Mildred Custon was drawn to it by somebody else at that department store. And she sort of went crazy for it. She said what impressed me most was the purity of his line and the simplicity of his design. So take us back to 1968. What was different about what you were doing than other things on 7th Avenue?

27:11Nicole Phelps:I'm not sure what was different. I could tell you later on as I expanded into fragrance and other businesses, I would look at what the whole market was doing. But in the very beginning, I just had a desire to do my own thing. and the only way I could do it was befriending a pattern maker who when I gave him the sketch, he would drape fabric and make a pattern from that. From that pattern, we made a sample. I had a sample tailor who lived in Brooklyn and I worked with him one time and I told him I was going to do this. Would he make my samples? He said yes. And every night he would go to his sewing machine in his daughter's bedroom, and he'd be sewing up the samples.

28:13I had a cutter who cut the sample for him to sew, and he lived in Queens.

28:21Nicole Phelps:And I used to go from Queens to Long Island to Manhattan, all over the place. And he lived in Queens and he would cut the fabric on his kitchen table in Queens. Finally, I ended up with the samples and I told two stores that I was going to do this while I was on a job. But it wasn't anything that I thought competed with the people I was working for at the time. But maybe it was not the most honest thing to do. Um, so, um, the two buyers promised that they would see the work and, and, um, we would see what happens from there. And I took a little room, a showroom, not much bigger than this little studio space, in a hotel on 7th Avenue.

29:18Nicole Phelps:And to keep the clothes there and show to whoever wanted to see the clothes. The room was opposite the elevator.

29:27Calvin Klein:Convenience. And purely by accident, the elevator door opens.

29:35Nicole Phelps:A man steps out and into my showroom and introduces himself. My name is Donald O 'Brien, and I'm the general merchandise manager of Bonwit Teller. And I thought, well, what a nice surprise. I showed him my few samples, and this was on, I think, a Tuesday or a Wednesday. He said, I will have the buyer come down and see the clothes on Thursday. He says, on Friday, you will have been discovered by Mildred Custon, the president of Bonwetella. And that's exactly what happened. I was afraid of creasing the clothes. So I got a rack, and I wheeled the rack up from 7th Avenue and 37th Street to 5th Avenue and 56th or 7th Street.

30:37Nicole Phelps:One of the wheels broke. I mean, everything that could happen happened. and sure enough I get to Bonwitz whisked up to her office and then and so help me every word of this is exactly the way it happened on the phone they said Miss Custin's on her way up and so she said hello she sat behind her desk I presented everything to her and I told her the price she said never a smile she said Mr. Klein I will pay you such and such which was double the cost of what I was asking for she says just make the clothes look like this and I want them exclusive I said I can't do that

31:32Calvin Klein:where did you get the nerve to say no?

31:37Nicole Phelps:it was the right thing I gave my word It didn't occur to me that it required nerve. It just seemed like this is the right thing to do. And I knew she would understand. And she did. She didn't like it, but she did. And then afterward, I said to Don O 'Brien, I said, well, she wasn't exactly very friendly. He said, well, she didn't have her hair done yet. It's early. She was a great supporter. In those days, stores really supported and backed new designers. I think things shifted and the stores wanted the people who designed the clothes to pay for the advertising, to pay for the space they got in the store.

32:33In my time, they gave it to us. They were thrilled to be able to present something new or different, and they supported design.

32:47Nicole Phelps:And then she gave me I don't know how many Sunday Times ads, which was a huge, big deal that first year. But we worked together so well. I've always believed that this is a woman's business. Women buy the clothes. They wear the clothes. and they understand how to run the business, whether it be the retail business or manufacturing, making clothes. And that day, Mildred Custon, as well as other presidents of stores, women, just did great.

33:29Calvin Klein:And from the beginning, the aesthetic was already taking shape. There was a sense of streamlinedness. I read an article that quoted you, and you called them architectural and bulletproof. You said, I thought American women needed to be more streamlined. They moved faster. They were working. They were raising kids. It was a time when the rules were changing. And it sounds like the clothes that you were making responded to that. The idea of bulletproof, the fabrics were, they were strong.

34:09Nicole Phelps:They were stiff. It was a period when they were architectural. And they would stand up sometimes by themselves, especially some of the coats. And I always had a feeling for tailored clothes anyway because they were streamlined. And if you'd start decorating tailored clothes, there's something weird about that. I'm with you.

34:35Calvin Klein:I hate a superfluous sequin.

34:38Nicole Phelps:Yeah. But the idea of them being modern is the absence of decoration. it's the if if the design is good and the shape is good and the silhouette it doesn't need a lot of extra stuff to make a person feel better so I've just always believed in stripping it

35:02Calvin Klein:well as as you're saying here I read something recently that said that you weren't trying to Please Vogue magazine. I was more interested in the client. But of course, Vogue recognized you right away. In fact, I think it was just a year later that you had your first, you know, it's 1969 when you had your first Vogue cover. Do you remember what that meant to you at the time?

35:29Nicole Phelps:Well, the editor at that time, not the editor-in-chief, that was Diana Vreeland, But my editor was the Baron Nicholas de Gansburg. He influenced Bill Glass a lot and me, and we became great friends. And I would always preview what I was doing for Nicky. And then sometimes he would say, now tell me what's going on in your life that's not right. He said, I don't like what I'm seeing. I mean, he would tell me.

36:07Calvin Klein:He was honest.

36:08Nicole Phelps:Oh, totally. He would tell me. I mean, it was a total different time. And interesting how, I mean, Cy Newhouse was there all the time. But it was just a change in the way business was done that affected the fashion world as well as every other part of the business world. and Nicky was a great, wonderful influence on my work, my life. We had a deal every time we went to a restaurant and he introduced me to the best. We'd go to La Grenouille for lunch and the deal was the first time we go, Vogue pays. After that, I pay. But he had a great sense of humor. Everything was fun for him. But what a talented man.

37:16Calvin Klein:We should talk about another man who was very influential in your career, and that's your partner, Barry Schwartz. Barry and you were friends from a really young age, and you decided to go into business together. You're in your 20s.

37:32Nicole Phelps:We always had a dream when we were children of having a pet store together. We were going to go into the pet business. Well, we touched it with furs, but that was about it. An unfortunate thing happened. And Barry was in the military. He worked with his father, and his father was killed in his store.

38:01Calvin Klein:He was a grocery store owner, right?

38:03Nicole Phelps:Yes. Both families were in the grocery business, food business. And so he came out of the military, and he just said to me, what do you want to do? I had just started maybe my first job. And I said, I'm doing what I want to do. The only difference is I want to start my own company. And he said, well, I have some money. And we started making those samples, and he started paying for them. So the business partnership began right from day one with the company that we owned till not long ago, actually. He never thought he'd really be in it. He thought he would invest in it. But then he came to spend time after his father no longer had the business.

39:00Nicole Phelps:He spent time with me and he grew into it. And we had this friendship and partnership forever.

39:08Calvin Klein:It's so interesting that both you and Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan are all New Yorkers by birth and by childhood. In fact, you and Ralph Lauren lived pretty close to each other in the Bronx.

39:25Nicole Phelps:I remember seeing him when I was in school because he was a bit older than me. And he always dressed funny. I mean, he dressed the part that he played all these years and still does. Yeah. I was dressing like James Dean.

39:46Calvin Klein:What is it about the crucible of New York that turned you all into these hugely influential American designers, but also global designers? What was in the water?

39:58Nicole Phelps:You know, you should ask my daughter that. She's the one who said, because there aren't too many young Donna, Ralph, or Calvin coming up. And it's something about New York. It's something about being competitive. It's something about being Jewish. All of those aspects. And talent. But you have to have confidence.

40:29Calvin Klein:Well, your trajectories really do align with what you were talking about before, the emergence of sportswear. And I think that for young people today who live in leggings and jog bras, they don't really understand how big a deal sportswear was. This idea that you don't need to be corseted or buttoned up, that there was this new looseness that you really represented as the 70s came along.

41:00Nicole Phelps:But, you know, you go back to Chanel. She understood how to let women be comfortable in what they were wearing. And, you know, it's interesting for me because after I stopped working in the business, I started making my clothes in London. But actually, I was making clothes in London for myself earlier in the 70s. and today I'm making clothes for myself in Naples. Naples, this jacket is from Naples.

41:42Calvin Klein:Italy.

41:43Nicole Phelps:Italy, yes. It's so soft and so comfortable. The English jacket is bulletproof. It's like wearing iron. It's stiff. It doesn't move. you know, it's uncomfortable to wear, but it looks kind of great. So given the choice, men still dress comfortably, but they dress up too. Women, I think when they had the choice, they wanted to be comfortable. Whether it was day, night, whatever, sportswear, tailored clothes, it all, it has to feel good.

42:24Calvin Klein:I was digging through the Vogue archive and found this quote. It said, if you were around 100 years from now and wanted—this is from 1975, by the way—if you were around 100 years from now and wanted a definitive picture of the American look in 1975, you'd study Calvin Klein. So it's not 100 years later, but it's 50 years later. And it's true. Calvin Klein in American fashion.

42:52Nicole Phelps:Hand in hand. It's interesting because I don't know if that was from, we had six or seven models in one series, which was kind of great. And we were getting a lot of publicity at that time. But I rarely do what we're doing right now. I don't sit and talk about how I did whatever we managed to do. I just do it. And so hearing quotes back 50 years ago is like wild. I mean, it's kind of incredible. But when I look back, as much as things change, a lot doesn't change. And I get that from people who are still in the fashion business who will tell me they just came back from Paris or Milan and this you used to do and that you used to do.

43:55Nicole Phelps:And there's a certain amount of what they've become almost classics. You know, and that's great.

44:04Calvin Klein:Well, here's a classic, the Calvin Klein logo tee. But somebody had to come up with it. And I was reading Jeffrey Banks, who worked for you, told a story that it was the early 70s and there was a show and they put your name, your logo on T-shirts and the women who were sort of seating people at the fashion show wore them. Is that how you remember the first Calvin Klein T-shirt? No, it isn't.

44:35Nicole Phelps:But I love hearing Jeffrey would know. And it sounds very plausible that we would have done something like that. But I've forgotten how that happened.

44:49Calvin Klein:I mean, we take it for granted now, the idea that brands put logos on T-shirts. But somebody did it first.

44:55Nicole Phelps:Well, I always liked the idea of having the name associated with products that are not expensive. I mean, that's why I started doing jeans, because I loved them. I used to live in them myself. and I like the idea that they were not that expensive. And so we could say something to that woman. Well, it turns out every woman was interested in denim and T-shirts.

45:30Calvin Klein:And it's the mid-70s, 1976, and the jeans came around at the right moment. It was the dawn of the disco era. Everybody was wearing a little polo shirt and a tight pair of Calvin Klein jeans.

45:48Nicole Phelps:I think there's a certain amount of luck involved because the timing, although you get it when you're in the fashion world, you're very aware of the timing of what's in the air, of what's trending. So it's not such a great surprise. But then often it takes just one designer in fashion to start something. And then everyone, that happened with underwear too.

46:19Calvin Klein:Before we get to underwear, which I definitely want to talk about, let's talk about the jeans advertising because that shaped people's perceptions of the actual garments but also the brand. You have said that the only way to sell is by not focusing on the product.

46:38Nicole Phelps:That wouldn't be the only way to sell. It's one way to sell. You don't have to focus on the garment itself. But we knew exactly what we were doing with Brooke.

46:52Calvin Klein:This is Brooke Shields in the famous Calvin Klein jeans ads.

46:56Nicole Phelps:Yeah, I mean, that started, it always started with the writing, and that's where Duna Arbus came in. and Dick Avedon being the director. And Dick and Dune and I would sit and we would discuss who should be the voice, what the look should be, the clothes that work with the denim. I mean, every detail was mapped out. And we knew everything we were doing. What we didn't know was what the reaction would be to what we were doing. Because we just thought, it's fun. This is cool. It's fun. It's young. And it turned out to create quite a commotion back in those days.

47:52Calvin Klein:Well, it worked on me. I've told this story on the podcast before. But I was so obsessed with Brooke Shields that I wrote her a fan letter. And I got a post, like a stamped postcard in return. So those advertisements are definitely seared in my brain.

48:10Nicole Phelps:Yeah, and the writing had so much to do with it. You know, when she said, you know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing. People got crazy. They just really got crazy. And it sold denim like mad. Because that created the image that we wanted for the denim at that time of a little bad. Your parents wouldn't like it. And when the imaging is right and the design is right, you deliver on time. There's so many different reasons for success. real success everything has to be right because you really can't get away with much and Brooke, I run into her all the time she says she's still remembered more for those commercials than anything else she's done which to me is a riot but that marketing, that part was always fun I always thought I could do that I mean, I knew that why go to Madison Avenue to some stranger, which I did occasionally.

49:35Nicole Phelps:But then I would find everything wrong with what they showed me.

49:39Calvin Klein:You basically built an ad agency. I had. In your own company. Oh, for sure. CRK was my own ad agent.

49:49Nicole Phelps:And we placed the ads. I used to watch TV just to decide where to advertise. The 11 o 'clock news, I mean, I was obsessed with that. And I chose all the space on air and in print for fragrance, for denim, for underwear. Before we get to fragrance and underwear, you and Brooke Shields were often seen at Studio 54 together.

50:24Calvin Klein:Can you paint a picture of those times? It's another aspect of the past that sort of, you know, is iconic to those of us and legendary to those of us who never described it. What made Studio 54 so much fun?

50:38Nicole Phelps:I think there are certain cities in the world at certain times, Berlin maybe in the 1920s, Paris in the 30s, that became the place to be, New York in the 70s. I mean, you couldn't beat being here. I used to be at Studio 54 a lot, and they were my buddies, Steve and Ian. people would come off the plane and go to Studio 54 and not check into the hotel. I mean, crazy stuff. It was a period of freedom. Every kind of freedom. And it's never really been the same again.

51:25Calvin Klein:The Run Through will be back with Mr. Calvin Klein.

51:55Calvin Klein:Thank you. Valley. Internet fandom investigations and government crackdowns on rigged gambling. We're taking you all over the news cycle, going straight inside the priorities, pressures and power plays driving today's biggest decisions. Uncanny Valley tackles the questions keeping you up at night and helps make sense of the future taking shape right now. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

52:31Calvin Klein:Let's talk about the magic of fragrance making. You had many hits. I remember wearing Obsession, obsessively myself. Why is it important for a designer to get into the fragrance business? And what did you want to do that nobody else was doing at that time?

52:53Nicole Phelps:I don't know what anyone else did. I mean, I know the fragrances that were out there at that time, what the bottle looked like, what the packaging looked like, and what the scent was. But you wanted to be in the fragrance world because in those days, a woman bought a fragrance and she attached her identity to the fragrance. So she wore that same fragrance. It would sell over and over for decades. That stopped. And we and other American designers maybe stopped it because we would come out with new fragrances all the time, giving women a choice and saying, no, you don't have to identify just with one.

53:45Nicole Phelps:There are many. and these are all ways of increasing volume, of increasing the fragrance business and it worked. I mean, it worked. Whatever we did and we created some controversy. That was a part of it. I would do things that other people, I remember coming up with ideas for advertising, and I would tell the photographer, and one of them said, you would really do that? Would you? And, you know, yeah, I took chances.

54:28Calvin Klein:So I think what you might be talking about, the obsession ads in print, there were nude bodies, and you couldn't really tell whose arm, you know, multiple people's bodies, and there was a certain ambiguity to what was going on.

54:45Nicole Phelps:Well, there was that, but that's not what I was talking about.

54:48Calvin Klein:Oh, what were you talking about? I was thinking of denim.

54:54Nicole Phelps:We were advertising denim, and I was presented with a campaign idea that I had done 10 years earlier. And I thought, we're not going to do that. and I just remember looking around the room and I said, what about that? And that's where the photographer said, would you really do that? And I said, well, I think so. And it was provocative imaging for denim, but denim can be provocative.

55:39Calvin Klein:Is this the CK? I'm not going to go any further than that. Okay. I won't press you. Well, your advertisements turned certain models into household names. Of course, there was Christy Turlington with the Eternity Fragrance and later Kate Moss with CK and CK1. Yeah. Talk about your eye for models.

56:12Nicole Phelps:I like to think I have an eye for beauty. And that could be female or male. I used to find people driving along Sunset Boulevard, and I would stop the car and introduce myself. and I could just spot them. Anna used to, Anna Winter would call me and she'd say, have you seen anyone new lately that we should know about? Yeah, I could tell. That was easy. I get an emotional reaction. And that's editing film. You know, it was easy to edit Dick Avedon because Dick would present you with two or three images and they'd say, that's it. Bruce Weber would be hundreds of images, and we'd stay up all night editing, and every image looked like every other one too.

57:16Nicole Phelps:So it was quite a job editing. But I would edit, and I could feel it. It's purely emotional.

57:27Calvin Klein:You were reunited with Christy and Kate at the show.

57:31Nicole Phelps:It was so sweet. Yes. Yeah. That was lovely. Great that they were able to get them to come.

57:43Calvin Klein:Bruce Weber said he was talking about your work and he said Calvin's pictures were always about skin. Do you agree?

57:54Nicole Phelps:Well, I never thought about it like that. But I think there was, I wanted to have a certain sensuality to whether they were wearing warm weather clothing or nothing or resort bikini. They should be sensual photographs. and skin is a part of that.

58:26Calvin Klein:That was part of the reason why the underwear and the underwear campaigns became such a phenomenon, right? Like at the time, underwear wasn't necessarily sold with sensual ads. That was one of your innovations. There was something sort of clinical about it or the bra is there to hold your breasts up. It's not there to seduce. I don't know.

58:52Nicole Phelps:It was different for women and different for men. The advertising for men's underwear was more sensual than men's underwear had been before. Certainly. And for women, I think it was breakthrough. We just, someone sent me a photograph of Women's Wear Daily of, I'm with five young models. And I was introducing to Women's Wear Daily the underwear, the first thing we did. And it's a great photo. So it was, no one did anything like that. I don't know why. I was influenced. I was working with Kelly at the time, whom I married. And we would talk about underwear. We did the underwear together. And the women's underwear with the elastic band came from men's underwear.

59:57Nicole Phelps:So there was a tremendous overlap between what we were doing for both sexes.

1:00:07Calvin Klein:Going back to Vogue again, the underwear was such a phenomenon that there was an article that was written in Vogue. And Richard Martin, who was the curator of the Costume Institute, was interviewed for this piece. And he said what C.K. has done for the underwear industry is promote the erotic aspect. He has achieved a perfect melding of the design objective of the Bauhaus and the marketing objective of sensuality. So, I mean, it tells an incredible story that, you know, there were articles about the underwear, pages and page-long articles.

1:00:45Nicole Phelps:I never saw that. But it's nice to hear.

1:00:48Calvin Klein:I'm going to pull it for you and show it to you. So, it's 1993, and you put on a runway show for CK. It was the first runway show, I think, for CK. And the idea was to cast real people, which was sort of unheard of at the time. Now people, now designers are doing that and calling it a novelty. But you did it in 1993.

1:01:14Nicole Phelps:Well, you know, the other thing that regarding models, I used a lot of print models. Models that had never done a runway show. and I would say to them, I don't care how you walk. Walk the way you walk. Don't try and do it like a runway show. Just walk like you're walking down the street because it was the image, it was the look of what we would see when she was walking, not how she turned her body and did a half U-turn or something on the runway that mattered. And so the girls were no longer frightened by the idea of walking down a runway with hundreds of people in the showroom. And that started something, too, because then models were doing fashion shows.

1:02:13Nicole Phelps:But before that, they hadn't done them. It was runway models, they were called. and that was like a little theatrical performance that the runway model gave that I thought, it's not me.

1:02:30Calvin Klein:No, and so that goes back to this American minimalism that you stood for. It was sort of fresh and sort of the excesses, getting rid of the excesses.

1:02:43Nicole Phelps:Yes, in a certain way. why do you need to turn in the middle of your walk? I mean, what were people thinking? What's the reason behind that? So, yeah, we just got rid of the unnecessary.

1:03:01Calvin Klein:And simultaneous to launching CK, which became a huge, huge brand in the 90s, you also had a designer brand, a high fashion brand. And Vogue says at the time that it whispered style instead of screaming fashion and that your neutral palette earned you the name Mr. Clean.

1:03:26Nicole Phelps:Vogue has a good way of crystallizing all of these thoughts.

1:03:31Calvin Klein:But now, you know, it's 30-ish years later, and those 90s shows of yours have become such—like, they're such landmark collections. We see designers looking at them and riffing off of them and lifting from them. Do you notice that at all?

1:03:51Nicole Phelps:No. No. No, I don't. And I don't stay—it's funny because Kelly and I talk about this. when you're not doing it day-to-day fashion, it becomes a little less important.

1:04:09Calvin Klein:It's hard for us fashion people to believe that.

1:04:11Nicole Phelps:Well, because it used to be life or death. I mean, working with my team was pretty intense. I was not easy to be around, and we were very competitive. So you think there's nothing else in the world. But then when you're suddenly not doing it on a daily basis, you realize there is a world out there and there are lots of other things going on and that's life.

1:04:47Calvin Klein:Paint a picture of that not easy to work with. There were really long hours in the lead up to a fashion show. Is that right?

1:04:55Nicole Phelps:Yes, but that everyone had. I'm sure that every design team had to deal with that. And it's not how long the hours are. It's how intense they can be about being perfect. And there is nothing. There is no perfection. But we strive for something that you can't get anyway. And I think doing that creates sometimes an atmosphere of work that's tough. It was tough.

1:05:36Calvin Klein:Like your eye for picking out models, you really— 205 West 39th Street was like a finishing school for people in fashion. So many people who continue to work in the industry really, if they didn't get their start there, they at least put in their time there.

1:05:57Nicole Phelps:No, I know. I mean, I'm well aware and always so surprised because I meet people all the time in restaurants who say, I've worked in the company or I am still working in the company. And, you know, or in different parts of the world. You know, when you're doing it on a daily basis and you always seem to be late, whatever we're doing, we're late at. And you're not really thinking about the influence that you might have on other people's lives. Right.

1:06:31Calvin Klein:And there's sort of a uniform, right? The Calvin Klein uniform. When people worked there, they adopted it.

1:06:38Nicole Phelps:Well, it had to do with the makeup, the hair, everything.

1:06:41Calvin Klein:And no staples, I heard. No staples at the office. Only paperclips.

1:06:48Nicole Phelps:Mostly.

1:06:49Calvin Klein:So I want to talk about it's the early 2000s and you decided to sell the company. During different periods, even in the 80s, I was thinking about that.

1:07:04Nicole Phelps:Because I didn't have anyone in my family that was interested in the business. there are opportunities that come along where you think you can grow the business if you become part of something else and so for those reasons I thought about becoming part of a public company or selling I never really thought that it would be very difficult for me to be working with a new team. I mean, I just thought we could do that. But I was used to running the show. And suddenly offering an opinion and not everyone running to do it, to make it happen, was a bit of a shock. So I did it for a couple of years and then I couldn't do it anymore.

1:08:06Calvin Klein:I mean, by fashion standards today where you have a lot of people in their 80s working, you left your brand at a pretty young age. And I wonder, you know, do you have regrets about that at all?

1:08:22Nicole Phelps:No. No. I miss the teamwork. I miss the times when as a group we were creating. that, you know, but I look at it as I had a good run. I mean, who am I to complain about anything? It was all good. And then I had freedom that I'd never experienced before because my traveling, wherever I was, I was always in a factory. we were working all the time or rushing back to New York because we didn't have enough time to stay away now I could spend as much time anywhere I want and do whatever I want you know and be of help to people who might need some

1:09:20Calvin Klein:your name is as recognizable as Coca-Cola or as Vogue's it is very few people understand what it's like to have that kind of a name. And I wonder, these last 20 years, as you've seen your name appear, you know, on Billboard after Billboard, it's always changing down there on Houston and Broadway. What does it feel like to continue to see your name but not be involved with the company?

1:09:51Nicole Phelps:A little odd because I would change it. I'd make it different for sure. I don't know that it would be any better, but it would be different. Occasionally I see something and I would think, okay, that works for me. But more often, that was always my job, was to say, no, this isn't good enough. No, it should look more like that or we should go back to something else. So that's what I did and I could still do that even if I'm not doing it on a daily basis. On a daily basis, I live near Sunset Boulevard. And in New York, I put those billboards up and was able to reach people that didn't turn a page in vogue.

1:10:46Nicole Phelps:And that's what the idea was. So, no, I would do it differently, but I don't want to do it now. While I might miss some of the good, overall, I have no regrets.

1:11:03Calvin Klein:It was strange to see the Madison Avenue store change so dramatically.

1:11:10Nicole Phelps:That turned out to be a mistake. Mistakes happen. Things, you know, decisions are made that you take a chance and sometimes it doesn't work. That didn't work.

1:11:25Calvin Klein:I have to say, I agree with you on that one.

1:11:29Nicole Phelps:It didn't work. The idea of changing the interior is not a bad one, but it has to be better, not just some crazy thing just to be different.

1:11:46Calvin Klein:Who are your inheritors, would you say? You defined American sportswear in the second half of the 20th century. You, as I said before, are known as Mr. Clean. You invented American minimalism. Who do you think holds that mantle today? I don't know.

1:12:09Nicole Phelps:You should ask Donna Cameron. She's better at that kind of thing than I am. I don't know. I mean, I'm not close enough to it, and it's kind of an editor's point of view rather than a designer's. I didn't pay that much attention to what everyone was doing when I was doing it, when I was doing the work. I would focus more on what we did, and I think that's part of the reason we were successful. We ran our own horse race. we weren't looking, you know, at the next horse coming up.

1:12:50Calvin Klein:Certainly some of the people who worked for you over the years, Narcissa Rodriguez has a...

1:12:57Nicole Phelps:Very talented.

1:12:58Calvin Klein:Yes, he also practices a certain kind of minimalism. Phoebe Philo, when she relaunched Celine, there was an American minimalism to it, I would say. Right now, I mean, we've certainly just come through this moment where we use that quiet luxury word, you know, a thousand times too often, but post-pandemic period of simplicity. And I don't know if it will continue or we'll get the vibe shift everyone seems to think is coming.

1:13:34Nicole Phelps:I don't have a crystal ball. I don't. I could see for the brand what we needed to do for the most part to move on. But no one knows what's going to happen. So looking back, what are your proudest moments?

1:14:00Nicole Phelps:I don't know. I mean, I think just overall in terms of the fashion world, whatever we were able to do and that still goes on. You know, they're still making fragrance. We're still doing things. And I'm proud that we were able to start something that has a life after I've left it on a day-to-day basis. but I don't have they like having children I don't have different you know likes or dislikes I mean for me it was all about the challenge and that we were able to do something that other designers or certainly lots of them hadn't done so I was excited by the challenge and excited to this day proud that But it still goes on.

1:15:02Calvin Klein:It is a challenging time for independent designers in New York. As you said, there isn't a new class of Calvin, Ralphs, and Donnas that seem to be emerging. And maybe that's because it's a different era. But, you know, what can today's designers who are emerging now and on the rise, what can they learn from you? What advice would you give them? Well, the kind of thing I've been saying since we started this podcast, you need to believe in yourself before anyone's going to believe in you.

1:15:42Nicole Phelps:And even if you have doubts, don't show them. You know, be confident. Act confident. that's a way you can get people to be on your side and to believe in what you're doing. It has to come from you. That's the best advice I can give anyone.

1:16:05Calvin Klein:Where did your confidence come from, do you think?

1:16:11Nicole Phelps:I don't know. I mean, I always had people that were supportive around me. People encouraged me, whether that was teachers, at this school or that school or positions that I held once I finished school, my family. Everyone was supportive. I never had doubters. And that doesn't mean I didn't doubt. I doubted myself, but I didn't let people know. But I did basically continue to believe in what we were doing. but you go through difficult times. You know, the fashion business or any business is part of the economy. If things are not great in the world, things are not going to be great in your business.

1:17:02But you have to keep pushing on, work through it.

1:17:07Calvin Klein:And the flip side of that question, to succeed like you did, took a lot of drive and a lot of ambition. How did you keep replenishing that? Where did that drive come from? You don't lose that.

1:17:20Nicole Phelps:If you have it, you have it. And the other thing is I was driven because I never thought we got to where I wanted to be anyway. I thought we still needed to work harder, do it better. And that's drive.

1:17:39Calvin Klein:Thank you very much for coming and doing this with us.

1:17:42Nicole Phelps:Thank you.

1:17:44Calvin Klein:That's it for the show. The Run-Through is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex De Palma, and Stephanie Kariuki. It's engineered by Pran Bandy and James Yost. It is mixed by Mike Kutchman. One more thing, listeners. If you're enjoying The Run-Through, discover so much more from the Vogue universe, like my very first issue, which just hit newsstands this week, by becoming a subscriber at Vogue.com slash The Run-Through. That's Vogue.com slash The Run Thru

1:18:25Nicole Phelps:If you're looking for some of the sharpest takes around on film and television I hope you'll tune in to Critics at Large from The New Yorker

1:18:32Calvin Klein:So over here we like talking about what we love But also crucially what we hated about what we're watching But even more, we like making sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. So just join us, okay? As we make our way from Eddington to Moby Dick, from Ted Lasso to the rise in therapy speak, from the pit to Luigi Mangione, you have no clue where we're going to end up. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:19:04Nicole Phelps:From PRX.