Calvin Klein was arguably America's first rock star designer. He grew up in the Bronx, sketching designs as a kid, then kept up his interest in fashion as a student at High School of Art and Design, later heading off to FIT. His first break came when a buyer from Bonwit Teller, getting off an elevator at a wrong floor, stumbled upon Klein's start-up showroom of a dozen or so samples—a meeting that landed Klein a $50,000 order. From there, Klein produced his first sportswear collection in 1973, a jeans line in the late '70s, and a menswear collection soon following. He struck a number of licensing deals in the '80s, creating buzz with a series of racy commercials to promote them. The success of Klein's underwear line, combined with the peak of the designer-jeans fad, brought huge revenues to the company in the late '80s. However, the company suffered a number of financial problems in the recession of the early-'90s, nearly filing for bankruptcy before being bailed out by Klein's buddy David Geffen. The later '90s saw a return to profitability, particularly after the introduction of CK, a lower-priced, youth-oriented line. In 2002, Klein sold the brand to Phillips-Van Heusen, effectively divorcing himself from his company, though he remains a prominent figure in the fashion world still. He has kept a complicated personal life along the way, marrying twice to two women yet also having numerous semi-public relationships with men (younger male models in particular). He and his first wife had a daughter, Marci Klein, who's now a TV producer at Saturday Night Life.