by Donna Karan
Poor Ilene. This was before cellphones, so Queenie kept calling her to see where I was. My mother was very possessive that way—she needed to know what I was doing at all times and with whom. Ilene must have broken down and given her Stephan’s number, because I could hear Queenie yelling when he answered the phone at around 3:00 a.m.: “Get my daughter home. Right now!” I couldn’t leave the city even if I wanted to because of the snow—and I didn’t want to. A couple of days later, when the streets were clear, I finally headed back to Long Island. I told my mother the truth: that I had met a guy I was crazy about and had stayed at his apartment.
“I think I’m in love,” I said, as if that explained it all.
“In love?” She was angry. “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s an older man you’ve known for five minutes. What about Mark?”
It was a good question. I was committed to Mark. I loved and respected him, and he made me feel secure and nurtured. And to be honest, Stephan’s situation was a bit of a mess. He was ten years older than I and separated from his wife, Dale, who lived on Long Island with their two children, Lisa and Corey. He was an artist who held all sorts of day jobs to pay the rent: he worked as an insurance salesman and also for his father’s business, I. Weiss and Sons, which made stage curtains and scenery. Stephan was a bohemian, a child of Woodstock, which made him sexy as hell to me. He was also a pothead—he smoked joints the way other people smoked cigarettes, but it never outwardly affected him or interfered with his work. (I smoked my share, too. One time when my nephew Glen was five, he ratted me out to Gail and Hank after Mark and I offered him a toke on our pipe while babysitting him with our friends.) Stephan wasn’t exactly looking to marry me and raise babies, which is what I wanted more than anything. He was already devoted to his own two children and had an unhappy and temperamental wife who was not ready to let go. Stephan did his best to get along with Dale in order to see their kids. She often threatened to withhold visitation.
He was also a known ladies’ man, something my sister was quick to tell my mother. She knew Stephan from school, and also knew Dale—yes, this is how small my world was. Like my mother, Gail loved Mark. Nothing about being with Stephan made sense. But in my eyes, he was a father figure I could look up to—a man who was fully developed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He was an addiction.
I told my dad the whole story; I always felt I could tell Harold anything. “What do I do?” I cried.
“You know what you have to do,” he said. “You have to break up with Mark.” I said I couldn’t. I was so embarrassed and upset that my dad agreed to speak to Mark for me. He told Mark that I needed to take a break, that I wasn’t ready for marriage, and that I had dated someone else. Mark was crushed—so crushed that his father came over that night to talk some sense into me.
“You have to marry my son,” he said. “You love each other.” Nervous as I was, I held firm.
My mother lost her deposit on the Essex House. She made it clear she wanted no part of this married-with-kids Stephan guy. Even Harold, my wonderful, easygoing dad, told Mark’s father he’d punch Stephan if he ever met him.
But I couldn’t help myself. I started to spend all my free time with him. I was with him when he adopted Blu, his Great Dane. Blu was all black and the runt of the litter, and he was like a baby to us. I loved seeing Stephan, this tall, handsome guy, with his horse-size dog. His devotion to Blu was yet another thing that drew me in.
—
Meanwhile, my career had its own complications. Still a junior assistant, I was so eager to please at Anne Klein that I was working insane hours and taking on responsibilities far beyond my menial assignments. I thought I was doing okay, but after nine months I showed up at work one day and felt the energy had shifted. Something was going on. Either I was getting a raise or getting fired.
It wasn’t a raise.
Anne didn’t fire me directly. Hazel Haire, her assistant, did. The official reason was that I wasn’t pulling my weight, maybe because I was too distracted by my personal life, which I talked about at work. But deep down, I knew the real reason I’d been fired: Anne thought I was too neurotic, and she was right. Her office was highly professional and structured, and I felt totally intimidated and self-conscious there. I was an unpolished kid from Long Island, and everyone else seemed so adult and sure of themselves. No one offered me any guidance or advice, so I worked day and night, walking around with my head and shoulders hunched over, trying to be invisible. But at the same time, I tried too hard and talked too much. At one point my desk was moved to the sample room to minimize my presence. My anxiety was making everyone around me uncomfortable, and I had to go.
So there I was, devastated, living at home, my love life a mess, a design school dropout, and fired from my first real job. Now what?
Fortunately, I got an interview with Patti Cappalli, the designer for Addenda, a new and trendy division of the contemporary sportswear company Bobbie Brooks. A friend of hers in the fabric business had mentioned that “a wacky girl had just left Anne Klein,” and Patti took a chance and met with me.
I loved Patti the moment I met her. The only downside was that Addenda was on Broadway. There’s a big difference between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, where Anne was. My mother taught me that when I was a baby, and Parsons only reaffirmed it. Broadway was commercial fashion; Seventh Avenue was designer. Working on Broadway meant you couldn’t cut it on Seventh Avenue. Even today there’s still a bit of that stigma. But thank God I wasn’t stupid enough to get hung up on it, because when I look back, working with Patti was the best thing that could have happened to me.
It was just the two of us, so I got to do pretty much everything. I learned a tremendous amount about the industry as well as how to work within a budget. Unlike Anne, there was nothing intimidating about Patti. With a chic short haircut and an easy smile, she was like an older sister, warm and personable with a laugh-out-loud sense of humor. I could be myself around her, and it was then, free from the pressure to fit into a professional mold, that I began to come into my own.
The first time I met Patti, she told me, “Get a passport. We’re going to Europe.” A junior assistant would never get to go on an inspiration and fabric-shopping trip to Europe at Anne Klein & Co., where there was a team of designers, all senior to me. Yet here I was being offered a trip almost immediately after walking in the door. I was nineteen and culturally blank, even on a New York City level, much less when it came to Europe. I had only flown once—to Miami for my sixteenth birthday—so the idea of traveling abroad blew my mind, so much so that the whole left side of my face literally went numb from stress. It didn’t last long, maybe a day, but it scared the daylights out of me. It added a whole new layer of fear to my already anxious psyche.
Queenie sent me to a psychiatrist, Dr. Frederick Rath, or “Dr. Raaaaath,” as he answered the phone. He had long gray hair, smoked a pipe, and looked like Sigmund Freud. I instantly loved Dr. Rath, loved him—and I saw him for the next twenty or more years of my life, until he died in 1992. With him, I could explore my insecurities and feelings about everything going on in my life, safe from judgment. I was totally unsettled, and he helped me sort through my feelings. I missed Louis, who was busy with school. I’d lost the security of Mark. And I was struggling with my Stephan obsession. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.
On top of all that, there was Stephan’s lack of commitment. One night I was staying in the city after work to see the musical Hair on Broadway, and I called him and asked if I could stop by his place first. He told me no, it wasn’t a good time. So I did what any girl in my position would do: I went anyway. And when I walked in, there was a girl on his sofa. This was exactly what Gail had warned me about.
“Screw you!” I screamed. “We’re over!” He called after me, but I ran out of his building and didn’t look back.
—
Off I went with Patti to Paris and St. Tropez for ten days. It was a whole new world to me—the architecture, the c
lothes, the sophistication. At one point in St. Tropez, I threw my black bikini top out of the convertible we were driving, and Patti said, “Donna, women go topless on the beach, not in their cars!”
When we got to St. Tropez, I noticed I was called “Marisa, Marisa!” a few times as we searched for a place to stay. Everything was booked, so we wound up at a small, nondescript hotel. We even had to share a bed for a night, which could have been awkward but wasn’t, thanks to Patti’s easy, breezy personality. One night we went to Byblos, the happening club of the moment, and in the bathroom I saw the actress and model Marisa Berenson standing at the mirror. We looked so much alike—same height, same color eyes, same nose, same tan, same shiny brown hair in a ponytail—that I suddenly realized why people might mistake me for her. I was incredibly flattered.
But I was also overwhelmed by this ultrasophisticated world. I had never traveled anywhere besides Florida before, never heard another language spoken! Patti was single and the consummate career girl: confident and smart, a self-starter who commanded attention. I wasn’t anything like her. Is this the lifestyle I’m going to have if I become a designer? Traveling on my own and feeling awkward all the time? Is this what it takes? I had no desire to be part of that scene, any more than I wanted to live in Manhattan.
In Paris, Patti and I stayed in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Bristol. Even though I was an ocean away from home, my problems had come with me. Mark called constantly, and I was still conflicted. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a career in fashion anymore because I was so intimidated by the scene. I felt so lost that I opened up to Patti and told her Stephan was a playboy and an artist who did not want to settle down. Should I marry the guy who loved me or wait for the one I thought I loved?
Patti didn’t mince words. “Marry the man who loves you, Donna.”
I knew she was right. Mark would take care of me and rescue me from a world that brought out my worst insecurities. I called him from the hotel and asked him to meet me at the airport back home. Then I called my mother. She phoned Mark and told him he’d better be there waiting for me. The minute I got into his car, I pointed to my naked ring finger. “Yes,” I said. He kissed me, and in that moment I was overcome—not with joy, but with relief. I had just made the hardest decision in my life so far. Now there was no more uncertainty.
I wanted to get married before I had a chance to change my mind. Queenie wanted to plan a proper wedding, but I didn’t have that kind of time. Three days after I returned from Europe, on a Friday in April 1968, Mark and I married in Rabbi Ronald Sobel’s study at Temple Emanu-El off Fifth Avenue uptown. I became Donna Karan in a short jersey knit dress, ten yards of pearls, and an Adolfo fedora. I was nineteen, and Mark was twenty-one.
Mark and I had a small wedding dinner at Trader Vic’s in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel—just me, Mark, Queenie and Harold, my two aunts, Gail and Hank, Mark’s parents and his sister Ellen, Louis, Patti and her date Maurice, and my nephew Glen, our ring bearer.
After the ceremony, we headed to change at my aunt Jessie’s apartment, which was across the street from Stephan’s art studio. (What are the odds?) Harold was staying with her because he was separated from my mother at that moment. As we were driving toward the apartment, we saw Stephan walking his big, beautiful Great Dane, Blu.
I pointed at him and said to Mark, “See that man? That’s Stephan, and it’s over. I will never see him again.” I can’t deny it was a weird thing to do, but by saying the words out loud, I thought I could make them true. Good-natured Mark took it in stride.
We honeymooned at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills. When we arrived, they were holding a beauty pageant at the pool. If you won, you got a free room. Mark entered me in the competition, even though I was lanky, hippy, and hardly an American beauty queen. I didn’t win, and we had to pay for our room, where we stayed for three days.
The morning after we got home, Stephan called. He’d been trying to reach me. “There you are! I miss you. Can I drive you home tomorrow?”
“Stephan, I’m married—I married Mark on Friday.”
He took a minute to digest the news. “That’s okay,” he said. “We still need to talk. Let me drive you home tomorrow night.”
Like I said, Stephan was an addiction. I let him drive me home. The girl at his apartment was a misunderstanding, he said. He missed me; wanted to be with me. But he wasn’t exactly asking me to leave Mark. That was clear.
Fortunately, I had a big distraction. Mark’s father was so happy we were married that he gave us a blank check and told us to decorate our new apartment in Cedarhurst any way we wanted. I called my friend Ilene, who was working for the famed (and very dramatic) decorator David Barrett. We created a superchic apartment with big leather sofas and animal skin rugs, dark gray walls with a light gray ceiling in one room, and magenta walls with a black ceiling in another. In this ultrastylish setting Mark and I began our married life.
—
I never seem to begin anything without something else ending. Every birth is followed by a death. This time it was my beloved dad’s. Mark and I hadn’t yet settled into our new apartment, so we were still living in Woodmere, near my parents. My mother was in California for work, and she called and told me to go to her apartment. Harold was sick, she said. Very sick.
“Dad, you must go to the hospital,” I said when I saw him.
“No, it’ll cost too much money,” he said with great effort. “But stay here with me.”
I was scared for him, and for me. I lay next to him in the bed, but I couldn’t sleep. In the middle of the night I heard him gasp, and against his wishes I called for an ambulance, which took us to a Catholic hospital with crucifixes all over the walls. He died the next day, right after Queenie had seen him one final time. I was distraught—my dad, the warmth of my childhood, was gone. I’ve often wondered if Harold stayed with my mother to watch over Gail and me and give us refuge from her strictness and sadness.
Harold’s death led to a huge family revelation. Mark and I had just come home from the funeral at Riverside Memorial Chapel on the Upper West Side.
“Your mother has now buried three husbands, according to Hank,” Mark said, referring to Gail’s husband.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “There was only Harold and my father.”
But apparently there was another one. Before Gabby, Queenie was married to a man named Mack Richman. Mack had died, too, which was why Harold called my mother the “Black Widow.” Her garment-center nickname, “Richie,” came from Richman. Another mystery solved.
So this was why I’d been punished when I was a kid rummaging through the attic. My mother didn’t want me to stumble on anything—pictures, documents, cards, whatever—that would reveal her secret.
I’ve thought about it a lot, in and out of therapy. Why not come clean about an early marriage? What harm would it do? Queenie must have been tormented by this secret. I can’t imagine the psychological burden it placed on her, and for what?
But I knew not to go there. If she didn’t want me to know something, there was no reason to tell her I knew.
Credit 4.1
5
BACK TO SEVENTH AVENUE
The entire year I was with Patti at Addenda, I missed Seventh Avenue. It wasn’t Patti’s fault. She encouraged me to design what I wanted, and I did a whole collection based on the movie Midnight Cowboy with embroidered shirts and velveteen jeans that Bloomingdale’s loved. But I missed the pure creativity of the designer world, and I especially missed the fabrics. Patti remembers finding me in the design room one day sewing pants out of the shiny side of interfacing (the stiff fabric used to give some softer fabrics shape). It was an experiment, not something you could sell to stores. Patti designed for a mass audience and had to make her numbers.
I knew now that Anne Klein had been the right job for me, and I had blown it. I loved and respected the modernity of Anne’s designs and related to it on a personal and creative level. So, when I heard that Hazel Haire h
ad left, I called immediately and asked for Anne, praying she would take my call. She did.
“Anne, I’d love to come up and meet with you,” I began. “You’ll see. I’m a different person now. I’ve been through a lot and have learned so much.”
It was the truth. By this point I’d grown up, I knew my stuff, and I had gained a lot of confidence through Patti. I also mentioned to Anne that I was a married woman, which I thought made me sound more settled and mature.
Anne had her doubts; remember, this was a woman who couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me. But I was forceful. I invited her to call Patti as a reference. I insisted I would prove myself. She could give me a probation period; I didn’t care. I wanted back in.
Anne rehired me, and I made an internal vow: I would not, could not, screw this up. I was even bold enough to ask to be her chief assistant, a level up from where I had been. Amazingly, Anne agreed, and Patti, a true friend, was delighted for me.
Anne Klein was an entirely different experience this time around. Even if I was still intimidated by Anne, and I was, I played confident. She saw that I was more focused, and she loved my creative spirit. I was involved in everything she did, from choosing fabrics to creating boards to working with the sample room. Whatever was needed, I did it, even if I had to figure it out on my own. I didn’t want to bother her with silly questions.
The first thing I learned was that Anne was the boss. Yes, she had her investors, Sandy and Gunther, and her husband and business manager, Chip. But Anne was as much an entrepreneur as she was a designer. She controlled every aspect of her company—which clothes were sold and where, how they were presented—and everyone reported to her. I admired her strength and appreciated how much she sweated the details. Nothing was too small for her to have an opinion on, from the positioning of darts and buttons on a blouse to the coffee mugs we used in the showroom. She didn’t miss a trick.
