Calvin Klein

MARC JACOBSWith his reborn business still too modest for the fashion week tents in New York's Bryant Park, Marc Jacobs got a day's head start showing in a photo loft in Soho.It was a select audience, with the top fashion players in attendance. A showroom setting with limited seating is a more accurate barometer of fashion clout. What they saw was a first glimpse of the retro fever that raged through many spring collections. Marc Jacobs hopped decades and drew inspiration from clothing as diverse as Dale Evans cowgirl frocks and Busby Berkeley tap pants.

Fashion designer Calvin Klein is known for his stunningly classic lines and colors with names like dove, vanilla, parchment and ink. Look for those characteristics in his new home collection, which will debut next year. Calvin Klein Inc. has licensed the use of its trademark to Home Innovations Inc. to produce sheets, towels, silverware, glassware, dinnerware, furniture and other decorative accessories for the home.You'll be able to find his lines in department and specialty stores, as well as a flagship store scheduled to open next spring on Madison Avenue in New York.

If Bright Bluford wants a pair of shoes, little stands in her way of getting them.Take her Calvin Klein leopard pumps. Never mind that one is a 7, the other a 7 1/2 and that the store wanted to return them to the designer. Ms. Bluford decided they would be hers. And when it comes to fashion, this 33-year-old actress from East Baltimore usually gets what she wants.Among friends and family, she is known as a "shopping machine," a woman who can recite from memory the dates of sales at department stores in Baltimore, Washington and New York.

Calvin Klein has hired Gabriella Forte, one of Italy's most powerful fashion executives, to be president and chief operating officer of Calvin Klein Inc.Ms. Forte, who was executive vice president of Giorgio Armani and head of its U.S. operations, is so closely linked to Mr. Armani that she often spoke for him in the first person. As Mr. Armani's right hand, Ms. Forte personified the tough and articulate buffer needed by creative personalities whose names are on labels."I think the position that was offered me was very exciting," said Ms. Forte, calling from Milan.

The Italian designer Gianni Versace -- a bearded, vivacious Calabrian who lives and works by the credo MORE IS MORE -- was sitting in his baroque atelier on the Via Gesu in Milan almost two years ago, talking about how he bought a palatial home on Ocean Drive in that mecca of Florida hip, South Beach.I will never forget that conversation."I was on the way to Cuba," he said, "and I stopped just for 10 hours in Miami. I said to the driver, don't bring me to anything boring, just bring me to where the action is, where the young people go. He dropped me at News Cafe.

The word "bridge" may conjure up visions of the Golden Gate or the San Francisco Bay span, but many consumers recognize the term as department-store jargon for the area they shop in.Bridge is the department Hillary Rodham Clinton has shopped for years, the place favored by almost a quarter of women shoppers, according to a recent survey, and the area that far outsells the higher-priced designer collection lines."

FOR a moment last month it seemed as if the White House, under pressure from conservatives, was about to propose a broad new "child pornography" statute banning some depictions of children even if they are clothed. This would have posed some interesting problems for executives from Coppertone to Calvin Klein.When the Justice Department argued before the Supreme Court that a Pennsylvania man should not be prosecuted for possessing videotapes of young girls because they were clothed and not acting lasciviously, conservative opponents accused President Clinton of being soft on child pornography.

London Fog Corp. announced yesterday the appointment of a top menswear executive at Calvin Klein Inc. as its new vice chairman and executive vice president to spearhead the company's move into a more upscale line.The appointment of John Varvatos, 38, is part of an overall restructuring at the Eldersburg-based outerwear and raincoat maker as the company attempts to recover from the recession, changing sales patterns and a heavy debt load.The move was announced by Arnold Cohen, who took over as chairman and chief executive of London Fog in August after leaving his post as president of J. Crew Group Inc.Mr.

What do a waitress, a butcher and cook have in common? They're the new muses of fashion, now that designers have taken aprons out of the kitchen and onto the streets.Suddenly, aprons have graduated from just stain shields for nice clothes to just nice clothes.This doesn't mean you should rush out to buy just any apron at the nearest kitchen supply store -- the "Kiss the cook" apron is best left for the weekend barbecue.Aprons as street clothes have to be the non-frilly, unadorned, torso-covering styles.

In New York's Times Square, the world's crossroads of theater, cinema, sin and commerce, gawking tourists are greeted by block-high billboards displaying healthy bodies showing off their underwear.Rapper Marky Mark flexes a perfect torso in snuggy white Calvin Klein biker briefs. Olympian Nadia Comaneci flexes a perfect 10 toe in white Jockey for Her skivvies.What is this American obsession for underwear? Nice underwear. In Times Square, where dark peep shows feature underpinnings of a sleazier sort, the bright outdoors pitch is for wholesome sexiness.