Donna Karan 4n6033

DONNA KARAN ……………………………………….

“THE QUEEN OF 7TH AVENUE"

FASHION ORIENTATION ASSIGNMENT - II

Donna Karan Photo by Ruven Afanador

HISTORY & BACKGROUND ■ Donna was born into fashion on Long Island.

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Not only was her father Gabby Faske (who died when Karan was three) a tailor, her mother Helen was a showroom model and fashion sales representative.

■ Even Karan’s stepfather Harold Flaxman was in the fashion business. ■ Karan, while still in high school, designed her first collection and staged her first show.

■ She attended the Parsons School of Design for two years, leaving at the age of nineteen to work for the ready-to-wear designer Anne Klein. ■ Klein fired Karan in short order, but rehired her two years later. ■ When Anne Klein died of cancer in 1974, Karan was put in charge of Klein's Seventh Avenue sportswear company at the age of twenty-six, just days after having given birth to a baby girl. ■ Louis Dell’olio, a Parson’s friend, ed her a year later.

The growing skyline of Long Island City, Queens

■ During Karan's decade-long tenure as head designer, she built Anne Klein into the most profitable sportswear company in the United States. ■

In a foreshadow of DKNY , she launched Anne Klein II, a so-called bridge line of clothes priced slightly lower than the signature collection and meant for the working woman, basically originating the concept of bridge and lifestyle dressing in fashion.

■ So successful was the concept that the company's financial backers, Tomio Taki and Frank Mori, invested $10 million in working capital for Karan to start her own collection. ■

She turned over the reins at Anne Klein to her assistant, Louis Dell'Olio, in 1984.

■ The owner of Anne Klein & Co. Fall 1985 saw the first Donna Karan New York collection, a fast fashion line with an urban bent, and the reaction from the press and retailers proved once again that Karan made fashion history.

IDEOLOGY OF DK ■ “Everything I do is a matter of heart, body and soul,” says Donna Karan, chief designer of the international company that bears her name. “For me, deg is an expression of who I am as a woman, with all the complications, feelings and emotions.”

■ “Design is a constant challenge to balance comfort with luxe, the practical with the desirable.” ■ "I don't like fashion," Karan once said. "To me, it's the woman, the body." She described herself not as a fashion designer but as a "doctor for women's problems." She added, "In all the chaos I live in, I always want to create calm." ■

“I’m deg for an international man and woman. A creative person who never knows where a day is going to take them,” says Karan. “That’s why New York is on the label. It sets the pace, the attitude.”

■ Karan's Urban Zen Initiative, founded in 2007, is the culmination of Karan's philanthropic efforts. Explains Karan, "I founded the Urban Zen Initiative to create a working structure for advancing wellness, preserving culture and empowering children. These are causes that mean the world to me

Her style ■ If there's one designer who embodies all that New York City stands for, it's Donna Karan. ■ Her ability to channel the city's energy and attitude into not one, but two successful collections is how she can dream up both breathtaking red carpet creations and cool downtown street-chic pieces. ■ For Karan, it’s never been just about clothes; it’s about lifestyles. ■ She sees the entire picture from head-to-toe, from function to aesthetic. ■ Handbags and shoes are designed right alongside the clothes. “How do I dress the leg?” inspired Donna Karan Hosiery. ■ “The right bra?” Donna Karan Intimates. “The perfect glasses?” Donna Karan Eyewear. The list goes on to include belts, accessories and, as Karan puts it, “everything you need to pull yourself together.”

■ A modern system of dressing, Karan’s concept is based on Seven Easy Pieces, where a handful of interchangeable items work together to create an entire wardrobe that goes from day to evening, weekday to weekend, season to season. ■ Quintessential hallmarks include black cashmere, leather, stretch and moulded fabrics, often exclusively developed by Karan, as well as silhouettes that wrap and sculpt the body. changed the C-suite woman’s wardrobe ■ Her trademark style: comfortable, elegant and ultimately simple combinations that suit busy, working women, including the rich and famous. ■ Her Seven Easy Pieces – a body suit, pants, jacket, skirt, suede jacket, coat, sequined skirt –mostly in shades of black – set the standard for a sophisticate who wanted to go from work to dinner, without a lot of fuss. ■ Karan’s original intent was to design a more feminine line that was still elegant and functional

■ When she began her line, she got a lot of attention for what she called "seven easy pieces."

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"I needed a wardrobe, a real clear defined wardrobe that would take me from day into evening," Karan explained. "You know, I start with a body suit, wrap a skirt around, which you know is the kind of thing that I would wear, a scarf or a sarong. Add a tailored jacket and a scarf and you go." She also has a knack for drawing publicity, as with a 1992 ad campaign featuring a woman president. Her sexy, monochromatic outfits were part of the story, but so was Ms. Karan’s work in philanthropy and her delightfully kooky, new age persona. Her idea of fashion was almost anti-elitist. Karan herself has never been skinny, and she has always been open about having hangups about her hips and thighs, and about being constantly mindful of this when deg clothes. There is a yawning gap in fashion between the reality most women face getting dressed – trying to find clothes which flatter their bodies, accentuate their favourite bits, skim over other bits – and the charade acted out by most designers in which everyone is 5ft 10in and slender and can wear anything.

Hillary Clinton wearing a dress by Donna Karan at the White House in 1993

1992 ad campaign “In Women We Trust” depicted model Rosemary McGrotha going through the motions of a recently elected public official, all in Karan’s famous feminized menswear

It's 1989, and DKNY is born, a fast fashion line with an urban bent.

HER LABELS ■ Donna Karan international has two hundred company-owned and licensed free standing Donna Karan Collection, DKNY, and DKNY Jeans stores worldwide.

■ Karan’s quest for the perfect jeans, as well as her desire to dress her daughter Gabby, resulted in the 1989 birth of DKNY. ■ DKNY is what Karan calls “the pizza to collection’s caviar.” ■ DKNY grew so popular and diverse that other brands and labels spun from it, including DKNY Jeans, DKNY Active, DKNY Underwear, DKNY Jeans Juniors, and DKNY Kids

■ In July 1991 she launched her first menswear collection. DKNY Men, launched in 1992, consists of tailored suits, dress wear, formalwear, casual wear, sportswear, and shoes.

■ The first flagships opened in London – DKNY in 1994, and Collection two years later. 1999 marked the opening of the uptown New York City DKNY flagship store, located at 60th street and Madison Avenue, and two years later, came the downtown DKNY flagship on West Broadway in SoHo. ■ In 2001 Karan opened the Donna Karan New York flagship store, the premiere collection showcase, at 819 Madison. ■ Karan took on the world of beauty in 1992 under the business and creative leadership of her husband, who designed the bottles and jars for the signature fragrances and their ancillary products. The beauty division went on to introduce best-selling fragrances. ■ Completing the lifestyle approach to design, in 2001 Karan introduced a Donna Karan Home Collection “all about touch and feel,” which includes everything from luxe bedding and candles to cashmere throws, and DKNY Home, which accents interiors with fashionforward bedding and accessories. ■ There are also Donna Karan and DKNY Lenox Table and Giftware collections as well.

DKNY Madison Avenue

■ Donna’s brand was instantly popular but it often struggled financially. In her book, she describes monthly meetings with her partners as “stressful and antagonistic,” and she initially resisted their suggestion of an IPO as an antidote to the company’s serious cash flow problems. ■ She eventually capitulated and when DKI went public in June of 1996, shares increased 25% on the first day. When the company was acquired by LVMH in 2001, she writes that she was saved from “the public company nightmare.”

■ Earlier this year, though, Karan stepped down from the eponymous fashion company she founded with her late husband. Her split from LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate that bought Donna Karan International (DKI) and its licensing arm, Gabrielle Studio, in 2001 for $643 million, was preceded by rumblings that all was not well with the partnership. ■ In July, LVMH announced that it would put the DKI brand on hold, and focus instead on DKNY, a lower-priced brand that targets younger consumers. Karan says that LVMH’s plans to shelve the DKI brand was “a very difficult pill to swallow, to say the least.”

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LVMH Sells Donna Karan to G-III Apparel for $650 Million

■ With friends Ashton Kurtcher and Demi Moore, Karan launched Urban Zen Foundation in 2007. ■ She believes that the Urban Zen brand will resonate with a new generation of consumers and designers. “It’s more than fashion,” she says. “It’s a movement. They’re involved in the craft of the garment they’re wearing,”

■ Her original agreement with LVMH was that she could start Urban Zen as long as it remained a high-end brand with distribution that did not compete with any of the Donna Karan brands. ■ For Karan, that means Urban Zen, which she describes as an East meets West “lifestyle brand that is interested in both philanthropy and commerce” must sell its clothing, accessories, house wares, and furniture exclusively in its own stores or though a select group of small retailers. ■ Last June, she further expanded the brand to include e-commerce through her Urban Zen website. Karan says she’s very comfortable with the direct to consumer model. ■ Karan now devotes 100% of her time to Urban Zen, the company she started in 2007 with LVMH’s approval.

■ With Urban Zen, she says, she is back in creative control and approaching growth in a more deliberate fashion. “It’s back to basics,” she says. “Fashionable basics.” ■ Think $1300 sweaters and $800 skirts and pants. The company has no outside investors, has just three stores (in Manhattan, Sag Harbor, and Aspen), and a small team of 25 employees. Karan is CEO, a role she says she never played at DKI ■ In addition to Urban Zen retail, she’s established Urban Zen Foundation, which funds integrative health, culture preservation, and education initiatives.

NEW IN

SPRING 2017 COLLECTION

At New York fashion week on Monday evening, there was more fuel to the fire: the finale of the DKNY show featured about 40 models in boiler suits. Case closed.

This was the first show for DKNY since it was bought by production company G-III

SOCIAL SERVICE

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A member of CFDA’s board of directors, Karan conceived and spearheaded its Seventh on Sale benefits to raise funds for AIDS awareness and education.

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Karan co-chairs the annual New York “Kids for Kids” events for the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation, as she has since its 1993 inception

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She underwrites “Super Saturday,” an annual designer flea market/barbeque founded with the late Liz Tilberis in 1998 to benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

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To facilitate her many on-going philanthropic involvements, in 1999, Karan and Weiss established the Karan Weiss Foundation.

• In 1973, Ms. Karan travelled to for the Battle of Versailles, where five American designers — Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Halston, Bill Blass and Anne Klein — competed against a team including Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy and Christian Dior in an attempt to raise money for the palace.

• In his honour of her husband, she has funded a pilot program at Beth Israel Medical Centre, offering yoga, meditation, and relaxation therapies for both staff and patients, like Isaac Broderick • Through Urban Zen, Karan, an honorary ambassador to Haiti- works closely with the Clinton Global Initiative to & develop Haitian artisan commerce. She has also opened a vocational education school in Haiti to train artisans.

ACCOLADES ■

The Council of Fashion Designers of America has saluted her six times

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In 2010 she was nominated for their Womenswear Designer of the Year Award.

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In 2003, Karan was the first American designer to receive Fashion Group International's "Superstar Award."

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A year later, Karan's alma mater Parson's gave her an honorary doctorate to commemorate her contribution to the school and fashion industry.

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In 2007, Glamour magazine named Karan one of their Women of the Year.

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President Clinton asked Karan to design the prestigious Clinton Global Citizen Award in 2010, an honor he then presented her with for her work with the Urban Zen Haiti Artisan Project.

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Karan was also honored with a Gordon Parks Foundation Award for using creative means to change and educate the world.

2016 CFDA Awards

HER LEGACY ■

How Karan meets that challenge can run from the simplicity of a bodysuit (where it all began) to the artisan glamour of a limited edition hand-painted DeVoré dress. Whatever form the design takes, Karan will tell you it begins and ends with the body – its sensual expression, sense of security, and freedom of movement.

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In the 1980s, a time when many professional women in the United States were dressing in pinstriped power suits and collared silk blouses with bows at the neck, Karan provided an attractive alternative. Her system of dressing was based on a cashmere bodysuit, on top of which could be layered silk body blouses, sweater-like jackets, unconstructed blazers, and easy-fitting skirts or tros.

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"I have seen women transform themselves when they put on her clothes ," said Kal Ruttenstein, fashion director of Bloomingdale's department store. "They make you look sexy and strong, a rare combination."

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We have been in a period of diminishing the role of the designer in favor of the brand, but when the designer is the brand, his or her contribution is undeniable.

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The designer Narciso Rodriguez studied under Ms. Karan when she was the head of Anne Klein. “She could take a piece of fabric and wrap it around herself and turn it into an entire collection ,” he recalled. “She was a real designer that way, not a marketing manager. And she did something very few designers ever do, which is change the way women dressed.

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“Donna changed the game because she brought femininity to a powerful woman,” said the stylist Lori Goldstein. “You could still be powerful and an executive and dress like a woman, and that’s what I think will be her legacy.”

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Urban Zen from the beginning, making a connection between her creativity and her caring.” said Steven Kolb, the chief executive officer of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

REFERENCES ■ urbanzen.com

■ houston.culturemap.com

■ donnakaran.com

■ fashion-history.lovetoknow.com

■ thegaurdian.com

■ wmagazine.com

■ dkny.com

■ vogue.com

■ en.Wikipedia.org

■ vogue.in

■ instyle.com

■ google.co.in

■ slideshare.net ■ nytimes.com

Social circle ■ Among her fans who have become friends: Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields and Demi Moore. ■ Karan dressed presidents (Bill Clinton gave her two days notice to make a suit for his inauguration), movie stars (Barbra Streisand is her best pal),