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"  It&amp;#039;s a blistering summer day on Manhattan&amp;#039;s Lower East Side, the kind of thermometer sweller that causes mascara to run and tempers to flare. Kids are playing in a sprinkler that offers the only relief from the heat, while adults are reduced to merely sweating inelegantly. But when Francisco Costa steps onto a local playground, holding a crisp white shirt aloft on a hanger, he looks as though he&amp;#039;s encased in his own personal air-conditioning pod. In tailored jeans and black smoking slippers that reveal a few inches of bronzed ankle, he resembles an Italian movie star\u2014an Italian movie star, that is, who&amp;#039;s down-to-earth enough to carry his own costume change. Though he now makes less-than-cutting-edge Murray Hill his home, this part of New York City was Costa&amp;#039;s original proving ground as a designer, and it&amp;#039;s the area where he has always felt most comfortable. He&amp;#039;s gotten a chance to revisit those memories now that Calvin Klein is releasing Downtown, the Rooney Mara\u2013fronted fragrance that shares a name with the designer&amp;#039;s early-twenties habitat. (The campaign includes a short film directed by David Fincher and starring Mara, shot mostly below 14th Street.) From his perch on a folding chair, Costa watches his brunette muse as she poses for ELLE&amp;#039;s shoot, and he reminisces about his first days in the city. &amp;quot;I arrived here in 1985, and I basically lived [down] here,&amp;quot; the designer recalls of his migration from rural Guarani, Brazil. Only 21, he spoke barely any English and enrolled at Hunter College to improve his language skills. By night, he took courses at FIT and went clubbing at Area in TriBeCa. &amp;quot;We used to hang out in all these great places. It was the heart [of the city], and it still is. Except now downtown is downtown Brooklyn, right?&amp;quot; he adds. It sounds like a typical immigrant story, but Costa&amp;#039;s far-from-typical talent quickly attracted employers such as Oscar de la Renta and Gucci-era Tom Ford, where he put in much more than his Gladwellian 10,000 hours. Nearly 20 years ago, Costa was granted American citizenship, and a decade ago he took over as creative director at Calvin Klein (a turn of events that had been predicted by a psychic months earlier). The two milestones are not unrelated. After all, what better proof that Costa understands the American woman&amp;#039;s mind-set than his position at the helm of the ultimate American sportswear label? Costa had big shoes to fill, but he stepped into them confidently, working a signature sexy minimalism that has well served customers such as Nicole Kidman, Carey Mulligan, and Zoe Saldana. (And who could forget Emma Stone in a stately coral column at the 2011 Golden Globes?) But beyond the red-carpet hits he&amp;#039;s racked up, Costa has a loyal civilian clientele, and it&amp;#039;s easy to see why. A gallery owner, a congresswoman, a CFO: All could convincingly pull off the high-waisted wool trousers and long-sleeved sheaths he showed for fall (and, if they&amp;#039;re daring, his leather dresses). His pieces are never showy, never overt, but they evince an identifiable femininity. E. M. Forster once said that every novelist has an ideal reader; Mara might be Costa&amp;#039;s ideal customer, both in the sense that she looks great in his clothes and that she seems to be the type of woman he has in mind when he&amp;#039;s designing. This is clear to see as Mara soldiers through the heat in a wool crop top and knife-pleat skirt from the fall 2013 collection. She&amp;#039;s posing on the Pitt Street playground, somehow going unremarked upon by passersby, her slim arms raised, her milky wrists dangling through a pair of hanging jungle-gym rings. She pauses only briefly, to ensure her gray combat-style boots are in the shot. Costa looks over at her admiringly. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a sense of security and a sense of self-knowledge [there],&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s obviously talented, intelligent, very beautiful, but also quite feminine and gentle.&amp;quot; The woman who played multipierced, tough-as-nails Lisbeth Salander, gentle? On-screen, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s an antagonistic kind of image that she puts out there, but she&amp;#039;s actually a really soft and beautiful person who is playing this character,&amp;quot; Costa insists of the woman he first met in 2011, when dressing her in a cut-down-to-there nude gown for the CFDA Fashion Fund Awards. &amp;quot;Rooney is classic and feminine but also has a hard edge, which makes her a perfect fit with our brand. We&amp;#039;ve dressed her several times, and it is always a pleasure working with her because she knows exactly what she likes and wants.&amp;quot; Mara herself cops to this level of perfectionism. When putting together the short film, she and Costa, she says, &amp;quot;went through a phase where we were sending photos of clothes back and forth about what we wanted the campaign to feel like.&amp;quot; In the black-and-white film, Mara plays herself, sort of\u2014an actress who bounces between all manner of fabulous spots. The actress says she approached her preparation in much the same way she would a feature-film role: &amp;quot;The different looks were meant to take us through the character&amp;#039;s day,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;From her being casual in her own clothes, to her on set, to her more dressed up for press. But it was important that all the looks could come from the same closet.&amp;quot; The end result wasn&amp;#039;t a far cry from her own wardrobe: &amp;quot;The Calvin Klein Collection aesthetic is really quite similar to the way I dress in my personal life. It&amp;#039;s minimal, clean, and comfortable, but also modern and chic at the same time. That&amp;#039;s how we wanted the clothes to feel in the commercial: simple but also modern.&amp;quot; Fashion has always been a fascination of Mara&amp;#039;s, but beauty is coming to the forefront too\u2014and not just in the form of the woodsy-meets-floral Downtown, with its top notes of Italian cedrat. &amp;quot;Natural beauty is something I have always been drawn to. I still don&amp;#039;t really wear makeup in my everyday life; I would be horrible at trying to do it myself,&amp;quot; says the actress modestly. (On the shoot, she exults in the fact that makeup artist Kara Yoshimoto Bua taught her the perfect way to shape her eyebrows: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been doing it wrong this whole time!&amp;quot; For the record, they looked great before and after.) And stylewise, confirms Mara, she&amp;#039;s a devoted minimalist. &amp;quot;I have always felt that less is more, but certainly my style has changed. I used to be much more girly and frilly.&amp;quot; To look at her now, vamping in Costa&amp;#039;s perfectly oversize, mannish tuxedo, you&amp;#039;d never know. Click here to see Rooney Mara&amp;#039;s photo shoot for ELLE. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a14391/francisco-costa-interview/>