“Each season I strive to design a forward-thinking and effortless colle...” — Francisco Costa Quote

Each season I strive to design a forward-thinking and effortless collection with a very clean minimalist aesthetic.

The bottom line is that red carpet helps us broaden the appeal of the brand. Calvin Klein used to be about a very specific woman, but we've dressed so many different women at awards.

Right after high school, I moved to Rio and took classes to become a technician for a manufacturing factory where you had to figure out how to produce 3,000 pairs of jeans. But in Rio, I was by myself, which was very liberating, being so young. I got to do my own thing.

I came to New York in 1986. My father didn't think it was a good idea. I didn't know how I found it, but I went to Hunter College. I had no money and I couldn't speak English.

Even as a young boy, my passion was to design, and I have been very lucky to be able to do what I have loved all my life. There can be few greater gifts than that.

Most companies target women as end users, but few are effectively utilizing female employees when it comes to innovating for female consumers. When women are empowered in the design and innovation process, the likelihood of success in the marketplace improves by 144%!

My design philosophy is to make women feel like peacocks.

In a way, advertising, for all its shallowness, its love of design, its modishness and its self-justification, is curiously innocent. The idea of the hidden persuader or the manipulator is largely absurd.