Calvin Klein
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50 free Calvin Klein trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Calvin Klein is one of the few designers whose name most people have worn, or at least read on a waistband. The story behind the label is stranger than its clean, simple clothes suggest: a start-up funded by a childhood friend, a lucky wrong turn by a store executive, and a run of adverts that got people talking, complaining and buying. This quiz collects the fun facts about Calvin Klein the man and Calvin Klein the brand. It covers his early years in New York, the designer jeans boom, the underwear campaigns and the celebrities who fronted them, the best-selling fragrances, the business deals that nearly sank the company and later sold it, and the places the name turns up in films and television. The first questions are ones most people can have a go at, and the later ones are for readers who follow fashion closely. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which 1985 film is a teenager stranded in 1955 called "Calvin Klein" after the name on his underwear?
Back to the Future
Back to the Future has Lorraine assume the brand on Marty McFly's underwear is his name; the French dub changed it to Pierre Cardin, after the French designer.
Q 02Which 15-year-old actress starred in Calvin Klein's 1980 jeans adverts, two of them banned in New York?
Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields drew a flood of complaints, and New York's flagship network stations pulled two of the spots, yet sales of the jeans climbed to two million pairs a month.
Q 03Which rapper, later an Oscar-nominated actor, posed in Calvin Klein's 1992 underwear adverts?
Mark Wahlberg
Mark Wahlberg was still rapping as Marky Mark, and the campaign grossed $85 million for the company within 12 months.
Q 04Which Calvin Klein perfume of 1985, priced at $170 an ounce, became the world's second-best seller?
Obsession
Obsession was sold with steamy adverts costing more than $17 million in ten months, and a survey ranked them the year's most memorable print ads four years in a row.
Q 05Where did Calvin Klein put his name on jeans in the 1970s, helping to start the designer-denim craze?
On the back pocket
On the back pocket went the designer's name, and it worked: by 1979 Calvin Klein held one-fifth of the designer-jeans market.
Q 06What happened overnight when Calvin Klein advertised its new underwear in 25 New York bus shelters?
Every poster was stolen
Every poster was stolen after thieves shattered the glass of all 25 shelters, and the underwear line went on to be a hit.
Q 07In which 1995 comedy does Cher Horowitz wear a barely-there dress credited to Calvin Klein?
Clueless
Clueless has Cher's father object that the white slip dress looks like underwear, and she defends it by naming Calvin Klein as its designer.
Q 08Carolyn Bessette spent seven years at Calvin Klein before marrying which famous American in 1996?
John F. Kennedy Jr.
John F. Kennedy Jr. married the former Calvin Klein publicist in Georgia that September; her dress was by Narciso Rodriguez, a friend from the company.
Q 09Which British model, recruited at 14 in a New York airport, fronted Calvin Klein adverts in the 1990s?
Kate Moss
Kate Moss got her first solo campaign for the company in 1993, and a Boston-area group plastered her adverts with protest stickers over how thin she looked.
Q 10Calvin Klein was born in 1942 in which New York City borough, where he grew up sketching and sewing?
The Bronx
The Bronx was home through his school years; by age twelve he was taking weekend life-drawing lessons at the Art Students League.
Q 11Which Canadian pop star was unveiled as the new face and body of Calvin Klein in early 2015?
Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber had already endorsed Adidas and launched a nail-polish line that sold a million bottles in under two months.
Q 12Jung Kook, named a Calvin Klein global ambassador in March 2023, sings with which K-pop group?
BTS
BTS made its debut in June 2013 with Jung Kook, then 15, as the youngest of its seven members.
Q 13Which former Shameless actor became a global Calvin Klein underwear ambassador in January 2024?
Jeremy Allen White
Jeremy Allen White was by then the star of The Bear, playing chef Carmy Berzatto after a decade as Lip Gallagher in Shameless.
Q 21Which Calvin Klein floral scent of 1988 was sold on themes of love, marriage and commitment?
Eternity
Eternity followed the designer's second marriage, and its softer $18 million campaign helped it gross $35 million in its first year.
Q 22Which 1994 Calvin Klein scent became the first unisex fragrance to win wide popularity in the US?
CK One
CK One made more than $5 million in its first 10 days and went on to bring in about $90 million a year in the mid-1990s.
Q 23Calvin Klein's 1980s fragrances were launched by Minnetonka, a firm better known for which bathroom brand?
Softsoap
Softsoap, the pump-bottle liquid soap, had made Minnetonka's name; the firm sold that brand to Colgate-Palmolive in 1987.
Q 14Which style of men's underwear did Calvin Klein's 1992 adverts make famous?
Boxer briefs
Boxer briefs were long credited to Calvin Klein menswear chief John Varvatos, who said his team just cut the legs off a pair of long johns.
Q 15A Calvin Klein jeans billboard of model Patti Hansen stayed up for four years at which New York landmark?
Times Square
Times Square carried the shot of Hansen on her hands and knees, the designer label visible on her hip, and it caused a sensation.
Q 16Which childhood friend lent Calvin Klein $10,000 in 1968 and became his partner in the company?
Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz joined a month later, after the Harlem supermarket he had inherited was gutted in the riots that followed Martin Luther King's assassination.
Q 17What did Calvin Klein's company sell when it started out in a New York hotel room in 1968?
Women's coats
Women's coats were the whole business at first, along with two-piece suits; only in 1972 did he switch to mix-and-match sportswear.
Q 18Which New York store gave Calvin Klein his big break after an executive stopped at the wrong floor?
Bonwit Teller
Bonwit Teller's vice-president liked the samples he stumbled on, and Klein wheeled the rack uptown himself to win a $50,000 order on the spot.
Q 19By 1979 only which socialite's label was outselling Calvin Klein in the designer-jeans market?
Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria Vanderbilt's tightly fitted jeans carried her embroidered signature and a swan logo, and they were the only designer denim outselling his.
Q 20Which later rival designer was raised in the same New York borough and Jewish community as Calvin Klein?
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren was born three years earlier, in 1939, and by the 1970s his label was one of Calvin Klein's two major competitors.
Q 24Which entertainment mogul rescued Calvin Klein in 1992 by buying $62 million of the company's debt?
David Geffen
David Geffen, a friend of the designer for many years, bought the debt at a discount and was repaid within a year.
Q 25Which American shirtmaker bought Calvin Klein's company in a deal completed in February 2003?
Phillips-Van Heusen
Phillips-Van Heusen, then the largest shirtmaker in the United States, paid about $430 million in cash and stock and kept the founder on as a design consultant.
Q 26Which Belgian designer was named Calvin Klein's chief creative officer in 2016 and left after two years?
Raf Simons
Raf Simons arrived from Christian Dior, and a few months after his exit the fashion house scrapped its runway collections altogether.
Q 27Calvin Klein signed a three-year deal with a foundation for access to which pop artist's archive?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's foundation opened his archive to the brand's designers, and his artworks soon appeared on its runway dresses, jeans and underwear.
Q 28Calvin Klein's runway line was renamed "Calvin Klein 205W39NYC" in 2017 in honour of what?
Its headquarters address
Its headquarters address is 205 West 39th Street, in Manhattan's Garment District, where the founder and his staff long designed the collection.
Q 29Calvin Klein's four-level flagship store opened in 1995 at East 60th Street and which Manhattan street?
Madison Avenue
Madison Avenue got a vast store nicknamed the ice palace, designed by British architect John Pawson; it closed for good in spring 2019.
Q 30Calvin Klein's daughter Marci spent 24 years working on which long-running TV comedy show?
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live hired her in 1989; eleven years earlier, as a child, she had been kidnapped by her babysitter and freed after her father paid the ransom.