There Once Was a Wizard in the Wonderful Land of Calvin
Fashion Critic
By Cathy Horyn
New York Times
November 12, 2002
No better parable exists to describe the enchanted phoniness of the fashion
world than L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz."
Skipping down glamour's yellow brick road are straw editors and tin men,
believing what they believe, while lurking behind the big curtains of Paris
and Seventh Avenue, surrounded by vigilant monkey publicists, are gods
waiting to be condemned as mere mortals.
The recent publication of a book about Zack Carr, the late creative director
of Calvin Klein, reminds me again that the fashion world is not all it
appears, at least (or least of all?) to outsiders.
Mr. Carr, who died two years ago at age 55 of a rare form of cancer that
slowly crippled him, was much admired within the industry for his talent and
his Southern charms. He was a product of Kerrville, Tex., in the Hill
Country, where he was known as Chuckie or as just one of the Carr boys.
There were two other brothers, and one of them, George, put together the
coffee-table homage, "Zack Carr," with Sam Shahid, an art director in the
fashion business, and PowerHouse Books.
What makes this $75 book noteworthy among the pre-Christmas editions is that
by limelighting the talent of a behind-the-scenes player, which Mr. Carr was
for the 25 years he spent at Calvin Klein, it raises some Oz-like questions.
Who actually was the designer at Calvin Klein all those years, Mr. Klein or
his acolyte?
And does it matter in the new gilded age of brands, when many designer
collections are not designed by the designer at all, whether the public
knows?
George Carr and Mr. Shahid said they wanted to do a book that dwelt only on
the acolyte, not the star. To that end, they included original sketches,
photos of Mr. Carr with friends and examples from the collections he
designed briefly in the 1980's under his own label.
But there are few images of clothes he designed for Calvin Klein.
"It was a decision that I personally made," said Mr. Shahid, who has worked
on many of Mr. Klein's advertising campaigns. "Let's do a book on Zack."
Mr. Carr agreed. "It's all Zack for Zack." He added: "Nobody has to put
Calvin Klein down to get Zack's story out. The proof is in his sketches."
Mr. Klein, who was not among the 600 people who attended the book party on
Thursday at the Parsons School of Design (he was feeling under the weather),
praised Mr. Shahid's "fantastic art direction" but said he didn't think the
book was about Mr. Carr or him.
"I think the book is about George Carr," Mr. Klein said. "This is about a
brother and his feelings for Zack. To me, that's what the book is about -
this love and admiration."
It may be, as the photographer Bruce Weber suggested, that the only purpose
of this elegant book is to keep alive the memory of an unsung design hero, a
phrase used by Patrick McCarthy, the editorial director of Fairchild
Publications, in the book's wistful series of remembrances.
But what a pity. By wanting to be noble and to give credit where it was due,
the collaborators missed - or perhaps tiptoed around - the most compelling
drama of all: the complex relationship between Mr. Klein and Mr. Carr.
Of the two men, it was Mr. Carr who possessed the artistic temperament, or
rather displayed it freely in moody silences that often ended with a spree
of treats from the Comme des Garçons shop for his adoring assistants.
As Grace Coddington, a friend and the creative director of Vogue, said, "He
could be up or down, over the moon or insecure."
Narciso Rodriguez recalled that when he was at Calvin Klein, he showed Mr.
Carr some sketches he and another assistant had made, but Mr. Carr turned
away coldly and wouldn't speak to them for days.
"Then one morning he came in and said: `Y'all' - he still spoke in a Texas
accent - `Y'all, I just want to say, I hate you. I'm so jealous. I cannot
believe the power I see in your sketches. I hate you both.' "
Mr. Rodriguez laughed. "Then he'd drag us off to Raoul's for dinner. There w
as no one like Zack. Creative, generous, vulnerable. He knew everything that
was fashion history, and everything that would be fashion history."
CONT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/12/fashion/12DRES.html
Mary Howard
Calvn Cline. Mary L. Howard/ Augusta, Kansas/ 67010.