People are glaring at me, thinking I’m skipping the queue. As I reach the front, I hear that moments before Calvin Klein has slipped past in the other direction. When I turn my head, I catch him returning: he is wearing a tight black suit and beaten lace-up navy plimsolls, and he too makes excuses as he edges his way back to the main chamber. It is almost as if the people he walks past don’t recognise him; they haven’t yet put a face to a name – to such a big name.

When I sit down to talk with him he laughs. “I don’t know what you could possibly want to know. What did Kissinger say? – ‘Do you have any questions for my answers?’” Klein left the company that bears his name thirteen years ago, and though he has been “busy”, I can’t help but wonder how a man who remembers with pride being “involved in every part of the process”, can be at ease with his name emblazoned on products no longer truly his own. As a case in point I take the 2016 advertising campaign. The blank space – “I ______ in #mycalvins” – is clever: people can feel/look/think different things in clothes, but making that ambiguity obvious is clever strategy. “What do #yourcalvins mean to you? What adjective would you put to them?” I ask. “I have an idea” he says, “I know. But it’s in my book. You’ll have to wait and see.” (The book he conceded to write only after his ex-wife Kelly told him “if you don’t do it, someone else will and you will hate it.”) In terms of creating anticipation, the man is still a god.

I ask about adornment and embellishment: “You have talked about these as enabling women to look like an accessory to men, whereas your minimal designs do the opposite. How would you advise a modern, independent woman to dress?” He casts his mind back to art school, learning about “above the table” dressing. “The fabric and the embellishment were for the woman to sit down at dinners and to look perfect.” Though it might seem out-dated, there are plenty of clothes still made for women that inhibit movement and are a far cry from comfort and clean lines. “I want clothes to accentuate the face” he says, “not to distract from the person wearing them. Not necessarily to fade into the background, but to accentuate, to complement.”

One thing that comes across is his respect for women, as people with lives who do not live for clothes. He describes working at a time when women were becoming more independent, and going to work. “Those ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ ... the ones who dine all day at the most expensive restaurants in the city while their billionaire boyfriends and husbands work… are not my women. Not the type of person I was interested in dressing.” He talks in awe of the women on the edge, working, “changing things”.

He explores his relationship with architecture. Aside from a reported $75 million house refurbishment in 2003, he has recently lectured to Harvard’s architecture department. He remembers shooting his first underwear campaign in Greece. There was obviously a “gorgeous male model”, but what made the image was the phallic building in the background. “It was a great way to launch a product. If I had the same model and the same underwear, but no building, I would have had nothing.” After the campaign came out, “people were breaking down bus shelters to steal the posters.”

He has been giving a lot of talks recently; it’s his way of “giving back”, most notably in the five schools he’s been working with in Harlem. He speaks with warmth about the pride and self-esteem in the children, who can now boast that “Calvin Klein designed my uniform”. I admit, it’s something my grey-pleated-knee-length-skirt-wearing-secondary-school self wishes she could claim.

His famous perfumes fit seamlessly into the brand. ‘Obsession’, his first fragrance, was inspired by Studio 54, filled with “Models, socialites and generally really beautiful people. New York at that time in the early 80s was really very exciting.” It was, he says, “real inspiration”. This huge success led him to his next scent ‘Eternity’, a different type of perfume altogether. “We did our market research; we knew what scents were trending”. ‘Obsession’ had been the “animal scent: sexy and full of lust”, while ‘Eternity’ represented the opposite, a “flowery, romantic scent”. Kelly and he designed the bottle together, taking inspiration from a diamond eternity ring: “It wasn’t a ring for marriage, it was a ring for more, a symbol for friendship and relationship.”
It was inevitable that the Brooke Shields advertisement in 1981 (“What comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”) was going to be controversial. Klein spent nights sitting with Richard Avedon drinking vodka and discussing what to do. “Fashion usually couldn’t afford TV. It relied on Vogue and Harpers Bazaar to sell itself.” When they showed it to the company “We thought it was funny [but] they were in shock”. And after being broadcast, “the TV threw us off the air pretty quickly”. Controversy brought publicity. “No matter how expensive TV was then, we had so much publicity, we weren’t even losing any money.”

Over five decades, the brand has stayed relevant, especially to young people, and made a hell of a lot of money: in 2002 he sold it for a package approaching $800 million. “Success is about loving what you do, not about how much money you make.” Calvin Klein has accomplished both.