Calvin Klein: Fashion victim

As the king of the catwalk hits 60, you'd expect him to be sashaying into luxurious retirement (after all, he did sell out for $430m). Instead, he stumbled on to the court during a New York Knicks game and has had the fashion world squirming in their Calvins ever since...

If Calvin Klein was a third of the age he really is, you might say, "Poor little rich kid". If his was a case of intolerable pressure brought on by instant fame, his current plight would be likewise understandable. If Klein had suffered some abject failure, then, yes, you could see how it might reduce him to misery and desperation.

None of these conditions applies to Klein, who on the face of it has good reason to enter the closing phase of a glittering career with a smile on his face. Yet here he is – all of 60 years old and one of the wealthiest and most successful fashion designers in the history of the catwalk – making a public embarrassment of himself, having to check in to drink and drug rehab and admit to the world last week that he is seeking help "to resume a healthy and productive lifestyle".

Along with Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan, Klein is one of the biggest global superbrands to have emerged in fashion in the past 30 years. The Calvin Klein look – sleek, stylish, modern – has helped to define the age. From haute couture to jeans, from perfume to underwear (as worn by Tony Blair), Klein's creations have been bought by millions and influenced the dress sense of millions more. If you've ever wondered where the fashion came from for jeans that slip down to reveal the waistband of what's underneath, ask Calvin Klein.

For a poor boy from the Bronx who dreamt of opening a pet shop and put together his first collection on the back of a $6,000 loan, it's not a bad result. The shirt giant Phillips-Van Heusen certainly thought so when last year it bought the Calvin Klein label for a staggering $430m (£270m) in a deal that not only sealed Klein's place in the ranks of fashion's super-rich but gave him a dominant role in the new set-up. Yet within three months of the deal going through, Klein was giving his friends cause for concern. He had had drink and prescription drug problems when he lived through New York's heady days in the 1970s and 1980s. But that was then. Or so people thought.

There was no hiding what happened last month when he attended a New York Knicks basketball match. A figure emerged from the crowd and wandered across the court towards one of the Knicks' star players and tapped him on the arm as he was in mid-throw. Security led the man back to his seat. It was Klein.

Such outlandish behaviour left Klein with nowhere to turn but back to drug rehab. Nothing unusual in that for celebrities of Klein's stature, maybe, but what makes it so much worse for Klein, according to one associate, is first his age, and second his desire to maintain an aura of serenity and self-control. "I think it's the strain of trying to do that which may be Calvin's problem," she says. "He's a control freak – over himself and other people. And he can't cope with the amount of pressure he's putting himself under."

Certainly there has always been a conflict between the image Klein presents to the world – as expressed in the clothes – and the reality of a private life that has been characterised by faltering happiness, regular bouts of turmoil, and an anguished episode in which the life of his daughter was threatened. Two failed marriages have done little to quench speculation about Klein's sexuality. But if he is gay, he has shown a marked reluctance to say so, even in a world in which gayness is no big deal.

Klein thinks his fastidiousness derives in large part from his mother Flo. "She put plastic covers over everything in the house," he once recalled. This even included lampshades and footstools, "in horrible, heavy brocades". This was the 1950s when, according to Klein, "everything was weird. Everything was perfect like that movie The Truman Show. It was like people were fake – they didn't seem real."

Klein's father was real enough. He was a Hungarian immigrant who had a grocery business. But as young Calvin was growing up, it was clothes and animals that took his interest. The pet shop idea came and went, and having sketched clothes from the age of five, Klein went to fashion college before setting up in business with a friend from childhood, Barry Schwartz, who went on to become chairman of Calvin Klein Inc. The story goes that Klein pushed his first collection 20 blocks to a fashion store using a rack with a broken wheel. He did not want the garments to be creased on the seat of a taxi.

His first marriage, to Jayne Center, coincided with the start of Klein's rise up the fashion ladder. The relationship produced a daughter, Marci, but didn't last, and by the late 1970s the now divorced Klein was a New York legend, thanks to his attendance at Studio 54 and products such as his skin-tight jeans and the perfume Eternity. "When they talk about Paris in the Twenties and Berlin in the Thirties, history will talk about New York in the Seventies," Klein has said. "There's never been a time like it. There will never be another time like it. It was wild." It had its dark side, too, and for Klein no moment darker than when Marci, then 11, was kidnapped. Klein paid the ransom of $100,000, dropped at an agreed spot. The kidnapper, who turned out to be the brother of a Klein babysitter, was arrested. In another incident, his limo was hijacked at gunpoint.

There was a second unsuccessful marriage – to Kelly Rector – and as Klein's business grew, so did the controversies that surrounded him, largely self-inflicted as they were. Klein tested tolerance to the limit with advertising campaigns that featured – variously – half-naked men in crucifixion poses, and young teenagers depicted so provocatively that, under pressure, Klein himself chose to withdraw the images. It was a classic case of there being no such thing as bad publicity.

Rather more clear-cut was the dispute that arose between Klein and the head of a clothing company licensed to manufacture and distribute the Calvin Klein range. In Klein's eyes, Linda Wachner, the head of Warnaco, was dumping too much CK merchandise in low-end, discount warehouses. He called her "a cancer on the value and integrity" of his name and brand. It was building up into a court case that would have had the New York fashion crowd hanging from the rafters, but at the last moment a truce was called. The consensus was that Klein had suffered the greater damage. His clothes had indeed lost their cachet, and although his latest collection, shown in New York earlier this year, was widely praised, one fashion insider says that "there's a growing feeling that Klein is yesterday's man".

Fashion is, by definition, all about appearances. And they seem to matter more to Klein than most. A guest at one of his New York parties recalled a drunk friend breaking protocol by telling Klein what he really thought of his clothes, and it wasn't complimentary. "Calvin tried not to react, but you could see it behind his eyes," she said. Still, if Klein cannot dictate what others do or say, he can at least maintain his own veneer. Or maybe not.