Subject: Klein Jeans' Sexy Insert Didn't Spur Sales 
Date: Published: 5/5/92 (51 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Advertising:
    Klein Jeans' Sexy Insert Didn't Spur Sales
    ----
    By Teri Agins
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    NEW YORK -- Last fall, Calvin Klein's sexually suggestive
 ads of leather-jacketed bikers and other couples embracing
 backstage at a rock `n' roll concert thrust the designer's
 famous jeans back onto center stage.

[58 lines irrelevant to AIDS omitted.  -- sysop]

    The House of Klein won't give any clues about whether the
 new in-house advertising staff led by Neil Kraft will revamp
 the way Calvin Klein markets his jeans.  But some on Madison
 Avenue believe that tapping Mr. Kraft, the top image maker at
 Esprit de Corp., is a clear statement in itself.
    The focus of Esprit's current "What would you do?"  ad
 campaign:  social issues like literacy, abortion rights and
 racism.  One ad shows a woman dressed in Esprit clothes with
 her name, home city and a quote:  "Find a cure for AIDS -- I
 couldn't stand losing another friend."
    Already, Mr. Klein has shifted away from the sizzling
 photographs of Bruce Weber to the images of Steven Meisel,
 another hot fashion photographer.
    The advertising staff changes are part of a broader
 internal shake-up inside the struggling Seventh Avenue design
 company.  Over the past few months, a number of key
 executives, in addition to the inhouse advertising officials,
 have departed in what several company insiders describe as a
 "housecleaning."  Insiders report that Mr. Klein himself, who
 in recent years has tended far more assiduously to his image
 than his business, has begun to burn the midnight oil.  Says
 one:  "After having gone through a dormant period, Calvin
 lately has been totally immersed in his work."
    That's encouraging news because many industry experts
 believe that Mr. Klein has his work cut out for him.  They say
 he must not only change the way he advertises his skintight
 jeans but the way he makes them, too.  Declares Alan
 Millstein, a retail-industry consultant:  "Calvin Klein must
 realize that his core market -- the people who craved his
 jeans in the 1970s -- can't fit into them in the 1990s."

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