by Donna Karan
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Copyright © 2015 by Donna Karan
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Karan, Donna.
My journey / Donna Karan; With Kathleen Boyes.—First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-88349-5 (hardback)—
ISBN 978-1-101-88350-1 (eBook)
1. Karan, Donna. Fashion designers—United States—Biography.
3. Women fashion designers—United States—Biography.
I. Boyes, Kathleen. II. Streisand, Barbra, writer of foreword. III. Title.
TT505.K37A3 2015
746.9′2092—dc23
[B]
2015025906
eBook ISBN 9781101883501
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Liz Cosgrove, adapted for eBook
Cover design: Belina Huey
Cover photograph: © Ruven Afanador
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FOREWORD
I want you to know how much I love my dear, dear friend Donna Karan…and how much I admire and believe in what she is doing as a designer, philanthropist, and visionary.
But first, let me fill you in on the side of Donna you haven’t read about that I find so amazing and hard to believe. She is the most scattered, disorganized human being you’ll ever meet. Her attention is fleeting, and she’s always changing her mind. She can’t remember anything…including plans you’ve just made with her. Chaos is her middle name. So I’m constantly astonished by all she accomplishes: the fabulous clothes—Donna Karan, DKNY, Urban Zen—the art exhibits, the fundraisers, the Urban Zen Foundation. I’m always saying to her, “You did this? Really? When?” I’m now convinced that the dichotomy of her nature and all she creates is a sign of her genius. And I don’t use that word lightly.
Like everyone else, I met Donna through fashion. It was the late 1970s, and I had just bought a fur, raisin color, and wanted something to wear with it. A friend sent me to Donna, and within minutes Donna was emptying out her personal closet to help me. That is Donna. You like the chic, sexy shirt she’s wearing? She’ll take it off and give it to you. Literally. And while Donna’s styling it on you, giving it just that right twist and tuck, she’ll be offering you a nosh, a green juice, asking how you’re feeling, solving your problems and your kids’ problems, giving you Reiki, applying essential oils, and generally planning your life.
Donna doesn’t just dress people; she addresses them, mind, body, and spirit. She is a creative visionary. Passionate. Forceful. Nurturing. Extremely hands-on. And generous to a fault. You can’t help falling in love with her. As a friend, Donna is thoughtful, funny, and mothering…she can’t help herself. That day in her studio, I spotted a chenille sweater in one of my favorite colors, burgundy, in a pile on the floor. They were throwing them away because it turned out the fabric was highly flammable. I didn’t care. I even offered to sign a legal waiver in case the sweater should ever catch on fire. But Donna said, “Absolutely not—give it back.” She wouldn’t take the chance. (By the way, I still have that sweater.)
Donna and I bonded immediately. We were two nice Jewish girls from New York, vacationing, dieting, and laughing—sometimes fighting, but always laughing. Throughout our journey, there’s always been fashion…amazing fashion. To be a friend of Donna’s is to dress very, very well.
I was single when I first met Donna and her husband, Stephan, a man I just adored. I became, as she would call me, wife number two…told you she was generous! Stephan was an artist who “connected the dots” in his work. He put dots on a page and randomly connected them, allowing a figure to emerge, which he then turned into a painting or a sculpture. Donna continues Stephan’s work of “connecting the dots” with everything she does. Especially with her philanthropy.
One of the things Donna and I have most in common is our passion for positive change. How to use our voices and creativity to get something done. How to use our platforms and public profiles to bring attention to urgent matters.
When an earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Donna became part of the relief effort. In the midst of disaster, she saw potential and made a commitment to help the many talented artisans in that country develop and market their work. Haiti is where all the Urban Zen initiatives come together: A culture that needs to be preserved. A people in dire need of wellness. And a future that depends on education and the ability to sustain culture through commerce. Only Donna would try to take on an entire country! But God love her…she never ceases to amaze me.
Barbra Streisand
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
1 BORN INTO FASHION
2 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS
3 SCHOOL OF DESIGN
4 THUNDERSTRUCK
5 BACK TO SEVENTH AVENUE
6 A BIRTH AND A DEATH
7 FLYING SOLO
8 FRIENDS FOR LIFE
9 REUNITED
10 ACT TWO
11 FIRED AND HIRED
12 SEVEN (NOT SO) EASY PIECES
13 SHOW TIME
14 WOMAN TO WOMAN
15 DKNY: A FAMILY AFFAIR
16 NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
17 WOMAN TO MAN
18 INWARD BOUND
19 LOSING CONTROL
20 SEEING THE WORLD
21 CREATE, COLLABORATE, CHANGE
22 THE LAST CHRISTMAS
23 FREE FALL
24 ARE YOU COMMITTED?
25 CONNECTING THE DOTS
26 LETTING GO
Photo Insert
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Illustrations Credits
About the Author
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INTRODUCTION
I had been up all night, tossing and turning, nervous and depressed. In the predawn light, I could just make out Stephan’s two paintings at the foot of my bed—one a big sunny yellow plus sign, the other a thick black minus sign—inviting me to choose my outlook. Easier said than done.
Today was the spring DKNY show, and for the first time since I’d started my company, my husband, Stephan, wouldn’t be there. For as long as I could remember, he had always been first row center at my shows, cheering me on. He usually sat next to my daughter, Gabby, my sister, Gail, or maybe our business partners since the mid-1980s, Frank Mori and Tomio Taki. When I walked down the runway for my final bow, his beaming face grounded me. He used to say, “There can’t be two of us out there,” so I was it. I may have been the face of our brand, but he—the free-spirited artist and ponytailed love of my life—was my rock.
This would have been our eighteenth anniversary (actually our thirtieth, if you start counting when we met and fell in love, but that’s another story). I had been doing so well since Stephan died from lung cancer three months earlier. At least I thought I was. But when you’ve lost someone, all it takes is some small, stupid thought to break you apart. For me, it was that empty seat. I’d come up with a way to feel Stephan’s presence at the Donna Karan Collection show two days from now: I would place his life-size red wire sculpture of a man sitting in a chair, a piece he made in the mid-1990s, in the center of the entrance. My spring collection was inspired by Stephan’s art, and I wanted him there to see it. But all I felt now was his absence. How did people get through their first anniversary alone, much less on a stage with the whole world watching?
But
I had no choice. I had to rally. Not just for me, but for what I refer to as the “we”: the enormous company of people whose livelihoods depended on my showing up and putting on that show, from the pattern makers, seamstresses, designers, salespeople, merchandisers, and publicists to the models, hair and makeup teams, backstage crew, and sound technicians to the people who would manufacture the clothes and the retailers who would sell them to the customers who would see them in a magazine.
This time I also had new owners to answer to, as Stephan had arranged to sell our company to the luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy–Louis Vuitton ten months earlier as a way of taking care of me and our family when he was gone. Sitting out a show, any show, isn’t an option. Sitting out this particular show was unthinkable.
With these thoughts racing through my head, I drifted into an uneasy sleep, and woke up to someone pushing my arm.
“Donna, Donna. Life will never be the same. It will never be the same!” That’s all I remember hearing.
It was Ruthie Pontvianne, a Brazilian healer and massage therapist who had been essential to Stephan during his illness and who now lived with me, taking care of me and running my household. Ruthie was crying.
“You have to wake up, Donna! Now! Look out the window!”
I was living on Wooster Street in SoHo, half a mile away from the World Trade Center. When I looked outside, all I saw were huge puffs of gray and black smoke.
Everyone has their 9/11 story, and this is mine.
Like the rest of the world on that terrible morning, I couldn’t immediately absorb what was going on. What was I looking at? An accident? An explosion? Ruthie had the television on. Reporters thought it was an accident, a pilot error of some sort. But that was just wishful thinking.
Then the phone rang, and when I answered, all I could hear was sobbing. It was Gabby, who lived just blocks away. She had been on her morning run when the first tower was hit. I couldn’t calm her down, but I insisted that she come right over. “Gabby, it’s going to be all right,” I told her. “Just get here as soon as you can. We need to be together.”
The second I hung up, Patti called. Patti Cohen is my lifelong friend (a sister, really) and was the publicity director of Donna Karan International. She was already in our offices on Seventh Avenue, forty-five blocks north.
“Have you heard?” she asked.
“Heard?” I found myself shouting. “I’m looking at it from my goddamn window!”
“I know, I know. But listen, the show will go on…”
Show? Show? I shook my head. “You have no idea what’s going on here. There’s no show—”
Right then, Ruthie screamed. The second plane had hit.
I couldn’t stop shaking. If ever I’d needed Stephan, now was the time. He would know what to do; he would handle this, and handle us. The phone in my hand rang again, making me jump. I hit the talk button. Patti again.
“Patti, I can’t talk to you—”
“Listen to me. They—the city, the government—want to use the Armory and our benches for triage,” she said, referring to our uptown show venue and the cushioned benches we’d arranged for the audience. “I told them of course, that they can use anything they want. I’m telling everyone here to go home.”
That’s when I realized that because it was pre-show for Donna Karan New York Collection, we had an office full of people, starting with the seamstresses who had been there all night. I didn’t know which way to turn. I had a building full of people I was responsible for, my daughter was breaking down, and my adored city—my hometown, the one I’d named my company after—was under attack. It was too much to bear. So I snapped into full mother warrior mode. (Like so many women I know, that’s what I do when I feel helpless: I take control and organize.) All I could think was, I have to get them out of there. Our offices were near Times Square, and I feared it was the next target, alongside the Empire State Building. No place was safe.
Gabby walked in the door, still in her black running clothes, and we hugged. She was desperate to leave the city, and I was desperate to get to the office. But we quickly learned that we couldn’t go anywhere. The entire city was shut down: every road, bridge, and tunnel. No one could leave Manhattan, except on foot.
As the day wore on, we sent stranded staff members to our Home Collection showroom a few blocks away, where we had lots of beds displaying Donna Karan sheets and comforters. Sadly, the Armory never became more than a waiting room for families. There were no sick or injured to speak of. All we could do was sit glued to the TV for news. The air in the apartment was filthy, but opening the windows would only make it worse.
Then, of course, the grief hit me—the overwhelming, suffocating kind of grief I’d been working so hard to fight for weeks. It wasn’t just for Stephan; it was for everyone. We were all in this together. On September 11, 2001, my private mourning blended into the world’s mourning. I didn’t think the city or I would survive.
—
But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s this: somehow, you do carry on. You’re never the same, but the truly remarkable thing is that life continues. Bit by bit, you adjust, and one day you even manage to smile and have fun again.
As the days after 9/11 unfolded, I was looking everywhere for a sign, a glimmer of hope that tomorrow would be better. Then it dawned on me. Fashion Week had been all but canceled, but we were still planning spring shows—very small ones, of course. Spring is a symbol of growth, of nature waking up after the darkness and doom of winter. We had two showroom presentations, one for DKNY and the other for Donna Karan Collection, and it was comforting to reclaim our way of life.
After 9/11, our city, our country, and our world came together in unprecedented ways. Support poured in from all over the globe. Our extraordinary mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, told us not to let the terrorists win, to go on with our lives as normally as possible. The fashion industry came together, too. I remember standing next to the mayor, me on one side and Ralph Lauren on the other, surrounded by designers and models wearing the same T-shirt with a heart on it, united in our efforts to raise money for victims’ families. To me, it showed that something beautiful happens when a community cares, connects, collaborates, and creates (all my c-words) for a cause that’s bigger than any one of us.
I’ll never get used to death, but I’ve learned to live with it, to learn from it, and to build from it. I’ve lost far too many loved ones in my life—my father, my mother, my stepfather, my longtime psychiatrist Dr. Rath, my uncle Burt, my dear friends Rita Walsh, Lynn Kohlman, and Gabrielle Roth—and so many acquaintances, associates, and people I’ve worked with, including most recently my young assistant Clarissa Block, who was also a good friend of Gabby’s. (Even Felix, my beloved Great Dane, died before his time.) When I look back, I see that death and birth are a constant theme in my life. Something comes to an end, and something new is born. Your world falls apart, and you’re forced to create a new one.
And that new world can be more beautiful than anything you could ever imagine. Without question, the most devastating death in my life has been Stephan’s. It changed everything for me. For two decades I had relied on him to fix, smooth over, and soothe any troubles that came up. But his death also led me to create my organization Urban Zen, a marriage of philanthropy and commerce, which allows me to dress people—and address people about the things I care about most. Urban Zen helps me find calm in the chaos of my life. Giving, I’ve discovered, has this whole selfish side, because you get so much in return.
I’m a very young soul, childlike in many ways. Just ask Gabby. She calls me a butterfly, constantly flitting from one thing to the next, never settling down. It’s true that I can’t stand still—never could. I’m a nomad at heart, forever traveling, searching for answers, and looking for solutions to everyone’s problems. Once a Jewish mother, always a Jewish mother.
Life is a journey, an adventure in which every twist and turn has something to teach you. You just have to stay open, be crea
tive, and see where the road leads you. Because, like it or not, your plans will change. Just be sure to pack seven easy pieces and accent it all with a sense of humor. God knows you’ll need it.
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BORN INTO FASHION
“How did you get into fashion?” People ask me that question almost every day. The answer: I was born into it. Not only did my father, Gabby Faske, make custom suits, but my mother, Helen Faske—known as “Richie” at work—was a model who later turned to showroom sales. Even the man she went on to marry after my father died, Harold Flaxman, my stepfather, was in the business, though he was on the cheap side of the street, selling knockoffs and schmattas.
Fashion was all around me, obnoxiously so. When I was old enough to take the train into the city, I hung out in the back offices of Richie’s showrooms. I put on my first fashion show when I was in high school. My first job was selling clothes in a boutique, and I was great at it. I had tons of insecurities, but never about clothes. When it came to clothes, I knew what I was doing.
Designing is second nature to me. It is who I am. I can’t help it. I see a problem—a desire to look longer, leaner, and leggier—and I have to solve it. A void? Have to fill it. And fabric, well, it talks to me. I drape it on the body, and it tells me what to do. It’s a dialogue without words. I become a sculptor, shaping and coaxing it where it wants to go, accentuating the positive and deleting the negative. You can’t teach that kind of design to someone. Like any artistic expression, you have to feel it. It’s in your blood, and it was definitely in mine.
—
I don’t have many memories of my father, but I have this one: I had just turned three years old, and we were at his menswear showroom on 40th and Broadway, on the second floor, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Because I was so small, they propped me up on the radiator box by the window so I could see better. I was enjoying the parade when all of a sudden a group appeared in the lineup dressed like stereotypical American Indians: huge feather headdresses, war-painted faces, jumping around, whooping, the works. To a toddler, they looked like a parade of boogeymen, all coming to get me. I was spooked, really scared. I jumped down and ran into a rack of men’s suits for safety. My father’s suits.
