Francisco Costa
Francisco Costa had been working for Calvin Klein for only a year when he was asked to assume one of the most powerful positions in American fashion: the hand-picked heir apparent to Mr. Klein himself, head designer of womenswear. It was 2003, and Costa was a relative unknown.
Costa was born in Guarani, Brazil, and moved to New York in the early nineties to study English at Hunter College by day and take classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology by night. After graduating from FIT, he logged time on Seventh Avenue, spending five years rising up through the ranks at Oscar de la Renta. In 1998, Tom Ford recruited him to design eveningwear for Gucci, but Costa soon found himself contributing across the board, working alongside Ford on such groundbreaking collections as the Spring 1999 Cher collection.
Following in the footsteps of an icon is never easy, but Costa has earned his share of praise from retailers and the press for forging his own identity within the clean and spare Calvin Klein aesthetic. Adding subtle embellishments like geometric prints, circle motifs, and flashes of patent leather, Costa has attempted to freshen the house's minimalist sensibility without abandoning it. His precision tailoring and attention to the structure of a garment have given his more recent collections an austere, architectural quality.
In both 2006 and 2008, Costa nabbed the CFDA's highly coveted Womenswear Designer of the Year Award, further proving that he is emerging from the shadow of his predecessor.
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