We have made a joint decision to separate after nine years," ran the statement issued earlier this week. "We have made a decision to live apart. We hope to work out any issues between ourselves. And we intend to remain the closest of friends." Another one of Queen Elizabeth's troubled brood announcing marital difficulties? No, this time it was a member of the US fashion royalty, Calvin Klein and his second wife Kelly letting the public know that after almost a decade together, they are splitting up.
Statements of this kind are not released casually under any circumstances - but when the couple involved is two of the most high-profile names in fashion, it's likely extra care was given to the wording.
At the moment, Calvin Klein's business is estimated to be worth close to 81 billion and just a week ago came news he and an English partner plan a £20 million expansion into Britain and Ireland over the next few years. What happens in the designer's private life has potential repercussions on his sales and Klein has always taken particular care to project what he and his marketing division believe to be a suitable public persona. But despite his best efforts, Calvin Klein's career regularly looks like a sequence of damage-limitation exercises.
Last year, for example, he ran into trouble with a new American advertising-campaign for his clothing in which models looking scarcely old enough to have entered puberty were photograped showing their underwear (a Calvin Klein line of course) and sprawling in lascivious poses. The accompanying television slots came with voiceovers in which an obviously older male voice asked young boys such provocative questions as "You look really fit, do you work out?"
Following widespread disapproval, the campaign was withdrawn and Klein apologised for any offence caused. Not that this was the first time a Calvin Klein advertisement had created a stir. In fact, ever since 1980 - when 15-year-old be-denimed Brooke Shields was heard cooing "Do you want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing - it has often appeared as though the designer was deliberately courting outrage.
In 1994, meanwhile, Klein's personal history was subjected to intense scrutiny when two journalists, Steven Gaines and Sharon Churcher, published an unauthorised biography of the designer, Obsession; The Lives and Tines of Calvin Klein. This very explicitly details Klein's troubled sexual history and, in particular, the many same-sex affairs which were common knowledge within the fashion world but were not, presumably. quite so widely discussed among the buying public. Not that he had been altogether reticent in the past. In a 1983 interview with Playboy magazine, he openly boasted I've fooled around a lot. I stopped at nothing. I would do anything. I stayed up all night, carried on, lived out fantasies, anything. I did an awful lot. I'm not going to tell you everything, but I'll say anything I've wanted to do, I've done.
This wasn't necessarily what Klein's customers wanted to hear.
The inherent conservatism of the US is manifest in its fashion industry. American designers are not great innovators because that's not what their market wants, instead, they have developed terrific skills as interpreters of current trends which they make palatable to the widest possible audience.
ALVIN Klein is one of the three most powerful fashion players in his country, the other two being Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan. Each believes its important to project a traditional family image lest anything more unorthodox could affect sales. fills in the details Klein chose Obsession to leave out of his Playboy's interview; the nights in Studio 54 New York's most famous club during the 1970s, during which enormous amounts of cocaine and alcohol were consumed, with Klein barely having time to go home and change clothes before turning up for work in his studio. Studio 54's owner, Steve Rubell, was one of Calvin Klein's closest friends during this period, as was fellow designer Perry Ellis; both these men, together with another American designer, Halston. subsequently died of AIDS-related illnesses fuelling rumours that Klein too had contracted the virus.
This story first circulated around the time Playboy's interview was published. Klein it seems, was devastated at the idea and - as if to counteract the promiscuous-drug-taker image - it was also during 1983 he started a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife.
Fourteen years younger than her husband, Kelly Klein first came to work as a design assistant in Calvin Klein's office two years before. Tall, blonde and good-looking, with a passion for horses, she embodies the WASP values so many Americans find irresistibly alluring.
Calvin Klein could scarcely have chosen a most suitable partner in the task of cleaning up his life and offering an image of the contentedly-married man.
The couple flew to Rome to marry in September 1986 and two years later, Klein bought his wife $1.4 million worth of jewellery from the Duchess of Windsor's estate, including a gold and diamond ring which the Duke had given the then Wallis Simpson. More than that, Klein then took the name of the ring and applied it to his latest fragrance, Eternity. Some might see this as a touching act of devotion: it could equally be considered there is something perhaps a little calculated about letting your market know details of what was essentially a private exchange between husband and wife.
SINCE marrying her husband, Kelly Klein has appeared to put her own designing career on hold. She has edited two books of photographs - one on swimming pools, the other, appropriately enough given that Calvin Klein's best-known item of clothing is a pair of briefs, on underwear.
Otherwise, she has been regularly seen with her husband, even though shortly after their marriage he bought her an apartment of her own in New York. The couple also own a beach-front mansion at Long Island's East Hampton, where they threw a party together just a week ago.
The news of their separation may cause temporary problems for the designer's business image but - on the basis of his previous history at least - it looks likely both he and his company will Survive the latest drama.