Embarrassed fashion mogul Calvin Klein denied any knowledge of his company’s controversial “Saddam’s Undies” ad campaign this week, a sweeping series of magazine and billboard ads featuring the deposed Iraqi dictator in his underwear, which Klein claims must have been a hoax masterminded by one of his competitors.

“Calvin Klein is the epitome of cool worldwide,” explained the blushing New Yorker. “What has Saddam Hussein got to do with that? Nothing. Don’t answer, I will tell you it’s nothing. So why would we use him as the centerpiece for our new ad campaign? We wouldn’t, don’t ask me stupid questions. Goodbye.”

Industry observers, however, claim that the new ads prove Klein badly miscalculated in his constant striving to find hot new looks.

“Who’s to say what is hot?” queried fashion writer Agnes Blout. “Fashion thrives on the offbeat, the strikingly incongruous. Whether that’s toned rednecks in their tidy whities or some underfed starvation model with no tits, cool is often what you make of it. Unless it’s a deposed Iraqi dictator making like Mister Rogers after a hard day doing whatever the hell it is Mister Rogers does at work. That’s taking fashion relativism a bit far.”

Some consider Klein’s reaction to be understandable, since the ads have been an unmitigated disaster for the fashion mogul’s company. Sales of white underwear plummeted within minutes of the ads hitting the street, and last week a church in South Carolina organized a burning of magazines containing the offensive ads. The magazine-burning turned tragic, however, when fumes given off by all the free perfume samples in the magazines formed a toxic cloud that ate the paint off the church and made several cows very queasy.

No one has gone on record to say how much Hussein was paid for the use of his likeness, though the answer is likely in the millions. Either that or a juicy ham sandwich delivered to his prison cell, it’s not like Hussein is at the height of his bargaining power at the moment.

“We felt like this was a fresh new direction for Saddam to go in,” explained Hussein’s publicist, Liz Turnbow. “No more of this ‘dirty old man pulled from a hole in the ground’ thing, that was so last year. It’s a whole new era for disgraced former dictators and Saddam Hussein is leading the way, with considerable style I must say.”

Industry observers are already ranking the Hussein ad campaign with the great fashion miscalculations of all time, like hula-hoop underwear and the infamous salmon necktie of the mid-80’s. Others point to the original cast-iron underwear of the early 1700’s, which failed due to poor marketing. Klein has missed the mark more than a few times himself, including a career-jeopardizing ad campaign featuring Marlon Brando in his underwear in 1979 and the truly-regrettable “California Raisins in their underwear” campaign of 1987.