by Donna Karan
Anne liked to design at night. Often it would be just her, me, and a model. She’d go into a zone and fit for hours and hours, a practice I picked up from watching her. I’d pass her pins, and she would work painstakingly on the model. Because of Anne, I, too, became a stickler for fit. To me, fitting is sculpture, a three-dimensional creation on a body.
Design-wise, we complemented each other perfectly. Where Anne was all about silhouette and fit, I was passionate for fabric, and she let me shop in Europe. I was among the first American designers to source fabrics abroad—and honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing. A classic story: I was twenty-one or so and went off to Frankfurt Interstoff, my first German fabric show. Julie (short for Julius) Stern, Anne’s fabric buyer, had arrived a couple of days earlier, so we agreed to meet at the hotel. I don’t speak German, but I had the address, which I handed to the cabdriver. He dropped me off at a small building next to an elevated train track and a donut factory. (What hotel is next to a donut factory?) The lobby was barely a lobby—just a desk with a guy behind it. Maybe hotel standards were different in Germany, I thought, and gave the man my name. He had no record of it, but he had a room.
“You’ll bring my luggage up, right?” I asked.
“No. You carry yourself,” the man barked in broken English. I guess the standards are different here, I thought. The room was ridiculously small; I couldn’t open the bathroom door without putting my luggage on the bed. It was grimy and didn’t smell great, either. I opened the window, and the burning sweetness of donuts wafted in. A train rumbled by. I was up all night, thanks to the sounds of pounding and squeaky springs heard through the paper-thin walls. The next morning I called the number Julie had given me.
“Donna, where are you?” he shouted. “I’m at the hotel, looking everywhere for you!”
I connected the dots: the tiny room, the pounding, the stench…I was in a brothel. I had checked myself into a Frankfurt brothel! God knows how—a misspelling? a cabdriver’s prank?—but I did.
—
As terrible as I was at judging hotels, I was great at sourcing fabric, and Anne gave me carte blanche. I loved her simple, classic palette of black, gray, navy, camel, and gold. When it came to inspiration, she’d say, “God gave you two eyes. Use them!” I think of her words all the time, especially when I’m traveling. Inspiration is all around us; we only need to look up and breathe it in.
To Anne, the customer’s needs, lifestyle, and mind-set came first. This modern customer, she’d tell me, was too busy to worry about clothes. In addressing this woman, Anne helped give birth to sportswear and the idea of mixing and matching. Every piece went with every other piece, so you could create multiple outfits with a few key staples. More than anything, Anne wanted to make fashion easy and understandable. When the popular skirt length dropped from mini to midi (midthigh to midcalf), Anne used the same fabric as the season before, so customers could simply switch the skirt, not their entire wardrobe. It was a brilliant way to help women get comfortable with a new proportion.
In many ways, Anne Klein was like her predecessor Claire McCardell, another great American fashion icon. Neither one could separate being a woman from the clothes they designed. I’m often asked if women make better designers than men, and my answer is always the same: “A good designer is a good designer.” But women do have the advantage of wearing and living in their designs. We know what feels good and which styles give confidence. We’ve got the same hang-ups about our bodies as everyone else. Which leads me to the most important thing I learned from Anne: how to balance creativity and reality. Clothes can and should be beautiful, but they work only if you want to wear them in your everyday life. If Anne couldn’t imagine wearing something herself, it didn’t make it into the collection. In 1967, the year before I joined her, Anne had patented a girdle designed specifically to be worn under miniskirts—not exactly something a man would come up with. (It’s no surprise Spanx was invented by a woman, too.) Anne created it for herself, because she had great legs and loved minis. She understood the relationship between a woman’s body and her clothes, and worked to make it a positive one.
Anne and I had very different figures. She was 5′2″, built in the front, flat in the back. I was 5′8″ and built in the back. In other words, she was belly and no ass, and I was ass and no belly. People called us Mutt and Jeff, like the famous mismatched cartoon characters, because we were always together, this chic little blond woman and her tall, gangly brunette sidekick. She was like a mother to me, which made my real mother more than a little jealous. Mark would pick me up from work and we’d go out to dinner with Anne and Chip. We spent summers with them at their house on Dune Road in Westhampton. She made me feel like family.
Anne and I also got each other because we were both New Yorkers (Brooklyn, in her case) and we both smoked constantly. I think she saw herself in me. Anne had worked her whole life, too. At fifteen she’d gotten an after-school job sketching on Seventh Avenue. At nineteen she’d gotten her first full-time job as a juniors designer at Varden Petites. She saw how unsophisticated I was and joked that she couldn’t take me anywhere, but she took me everywhere. And when I screwed up, she took it in stride. One time I forgot to remove an outfit from a mannequin that was supposed to be in a show. We got to the venue, and Anne started reading from the run of show—the order in which the looks would be presented. When she got to a particular number, I covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God, Anne! I left it in the studio, on the mannequin!” She peered over her reading glasses and, in a tone that was half angry and half amused, said, “You’ll never make that mistake again.” Forty years later, I haven’t.
We didn’t travel together much, but the times we did were remarkable. Our first trip was to Germany to meet with Margaretha Ley, a stunning woman who ran a knitwear company with her husband, Wolfgang. (They would go on to open Escada in 1976.) Anne and I landed in Zurich with the plan to drive the three hours to St. Moritz, where we would see Anne’s partner Gunther, who spent his winters there. Anne Klein & Co. had a fur licensee, so we’d each bought a floor-length silver fox coat for the trip. (In a licensing arrangement, a designer provides her name and designs the product, and the licensee, a manufacturer that is usually an expert in that category, produces it.) Anne’s fur had a hood, and mine had a big notch collar, similar to a man’s lapel. I paid $1,800 for mine—a fortune on my $30,000 annual salary—but I loved, loved, loved it. I wore it over hot pants with over-the-knee boots or a maxi skirt (my two looks at the time) and my bullet belt. To die.
We landed in Zurich with a ton of luggage and a Wolf-brand mannequin that Anne planned to use for her knitwear fittings. We expected a big car to pick us up, but instead a compact European car pulled up to the curb. Anne was sick from the flight and could hardly speak. I felt fine but didn’t speak German, so I had to refer to my German-English phrase book for everything. Somehow they found us a bigger car, but even so, Anne and I had to squeeze together in the backseat, and the dummy got strapped to the top.
The drive was snowy, twisty, and steep. The whole time, I was looking through the book for how to say something like “Please pull over, my friend is sick.” We finally arrived at the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, the fanciest place on earth, where Gunther lived in a luxe suite. He came out to greet us, saw the dummy strapped to the car, took in our matching silver fox coats, and said in his German accent, “Vat is this, theez matching coats?” To him, we couldn’t have looked tackier.
Anne and I went out and bought two new coats. Anne went for a little black fur, and I picked up a chrome-yellow long-haired fake fur jacket. At that moment European fashion was all about vivid color, and you could see this yellow from miles away. I wore it every day of our trip and thought I looked incredibly chic. Once Anne felt better, she took me skiing for my very first time, and we ended up having a highly productive meeting with Margaretha Ley.
Back in New York, I put on my Euro-chic yellow coat one morning and went to Chateau
Pharmacy in Woodmere for my usual morning coffee and to meet Johnny Schrader, my friend and fellow commuter, who worked in the fabric business. I noticed people staring at me and was sure it was because I looked so stylish. Then on the train a young boy pointed at me and said, “Daddy, Daddy, look, it’s Big Bird from Sesame Street.” As Johnny and I exited the train at Penn Station, I noticed everyone craning their necks to get a better look at me. Everyone. New Yorkers wear mostly black in the winter as they rush around in the slush, and there I was, teetering in my high heels, wearing this gigantic yellow coat. (Johnny wouldn’t even let me hold his arm, he was so embarrassed by the attention I was getting.) I ran to the office, left it there, and never wore it again. Fashion lesson learned: one country’s chic is another country’s cartoon.
—
We worked crazy hours in those days. Sometimes Anne’s husband, Chip, would hang out with us. Anne would have proper dinners delivered and served on china; she was very motherly that way. My trip home to Long Island was a trek, so staying late meant I had no personal life. While she was designing in the evenings, Anne liked her vodka and club soda, which I mixed for her. (Funny, now that’s my drink too.) So when I wanted to get home earlier than usual, I would add more vodka than soda, and it worked every time.
Truth be told, the nights I wanted to leave early were Tuesdays. I was still seeing Stephan (we had fallen right back into our routine after I got married), and that was the night he drove out to Long Island to see his shrink and his kids. It was our weekly ritual. We both knew it was wrong, but it was too intoxicating to stop. In my mind, I compartmentalized our Tuesday night flings. I told myself they had nothing to do with my life with Mark, that I wasn’t hurting anyone.
To be clear, Mark and I shared a real physical connection as well. We were sexually and sensually close, always snuggling and touching. He was easy to be with, encouraged my career, and loved making spontaneous social plans with friends. He adored spending time at Anne and Chip’s beach house and dining with them in the city. We were house shopping. We traveled a lot, to places like Acapulco and St. Maarten, and we spent our summers on Fire Island, off Long Island’s South Shore. We drove great cars, including a chocolate-brown Jaguar convertible, and we had adopted a black-and-white harlequin Great Dane named Felix (I was inspired by Stephan’s dog). Life was good, and Mark had no reason to think there was anything wrong.
And then I got pregnant. I was pretty certain the baby was Stephan’s—a deep fear in my gut told me so. I called Stephan in a panic, and his reaction was shocking: he was happy for me.
“That’s great, Donna,” he said. “You’ve always wanted to have a baby.”
“Does that mean…?” I asked, secretly hoping he’d ask me to leave Mark, move in with him, and finally start a life together.
“It means I’m happy for you…and Mark.”
“But the baby is yours.”
Silence.
“Stephan? Are you there?”
He was not there—that much was abundantly clear over the course of our conversation. Stephan had no interest in joining me on this particular journey.
“Fuck you, Stephan,” was all I could think to say. I felt utterly betrayed.
I told Mark about my pregnancy—and about Stephan. I wish I could have lied about it, but it was so momentous and so devastating that I couldn’t hide the truth. I didn’t tell him how much time I’d spent with Stephan, only that I’d made a mistake and was terribly embarrassed. Mark saw my resolve. He also understood why I had to have an abortion. I couldn’t have this child without knowing who its father was. It was the only possible way we could move forward.
I told my mother, too, and to my surprise she wasn’t angry at all. In fact, she was very supportive. She loved Mark and wanted our marriage to work out, and I think she also wanted to protect him a little bit.
“I’m coming with you, Donna,” she said.
“It’s okay. Mark’s taking me.”
“And so am I.” She was worried, understandably. It was 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided. Abortions weren’t quite as available or mainstream back then.
So Mark and my mother took me to have an abortion—a legal one. I wanted nothing more in the world than to have a baby, and I was inconsolable. Yet the possibility of having Stephan’s child while married to Mark was out of the question. This was the right decision.
I was done with Stephan. Finished. Over. The end.
—
Once again, Mark had saved me. I recommitted to our marriage, heart, body, and spirit. To be loved the way he loved me—unconditionally, really—was a gift beyond measure. We would have our own babies, our own life. In the meantime, we had Felix.
But for me, Felix was also an emotional connection to Stephan. Despite my resolve, I always had an eye out for him, especially on Sundays, the weekend day that I knew he visited his kids. I imagined running into him in Cedarhurst, me with Felix, him with Blu, and having a “Dane chat.” You know, “What do you feed your dog? How much exercise do you give him?” It never happened, of course.
I saw Stephan only once around that time. Mark and I went to a friend’s party on Woodmere Boulevard, and Stephan was there with his wife. It was as awkward as you’d expect. We said a quick hello, then avoided each other for the rest of the night.
Credit 5.1
Credit 5.2
6
A BIRTH AND A DEATH
“Donna, I plan to travel for a while,” Anne said one day in the late spring of 1972. “I need you to do holiday on your own.” With Anne away, I felt free, and my mind raced with design ideas.
Holiday/resort is the season that comes after fall. It’s less about a whole wardrobe and more about special pieces to brighten your closet, wear to parties, give as gifts, or pack for traveling. Holiday 1972 turned out to be one of my best collections ever. It was couture in feeling, with every piece artisan and special. I used my favorite colors—black, white, red, and vicuña—and incorporated lots of embroidery and leather. I designed small tops with big cowhide skirts, an all-over fringed suede skirt, Lurex sweater dresses, and a black shearling coat with ivory stitching down the front. Very hippie, very me. Kal Ruttenstein, who was president of the department store Bonwit Teller, put the collection in the store’s windows, surrounded by a sea of massive red balloons. I thought about how proud and excited my dad would have been to see the displays, and to know that I had realized my teenage dreams.
That collection foreshadowed my future. The truth was that Anne hadn’t been traveling that summer; she had breast cancer.
—
Anne returned to work at the end of August. The only indication that something was wrong was that she was squeezing a small rubber ball all the time, something I’d never seen her do before. (I later learned those balls are commonly used to reduce swelling and help lymphatic flow after a mastectomy.) Still, she was happy to be back at work and impressed with the collection I had done. She named me associate designer, and to retailers and the press she gave me credit. I was bowled over. In retrospect, I appreciate that she was preparing for the future of her company, getting ready to pass the torch.
Our next collection, spring 1973, received rave reviews. The New York Times referred to me as Anne’s assistant—a far cry from associate designer, but at least they spelled my name correctly. Women’s Wear Daily omitted it altogether, and I was pissed. To this day, I don’t know where I got my nerve, but I called June Weir, WWD’s senior fashion editor, to ask why my name wasn’t in the review. Big mistake.
“Never question the press for any reason,” she snarled, and hung up the phone.
—
About six months later, Mark and I learned I was pregnant. I couldn’t have been happier. I was going to be a mother—the thing I wanted more than anything. I fully intended to be a stay-at-home mom.
Yet I was concerned about Anne, who was becoming more and more dependent on me. The company was growing, and she relied on me to handle design while she tended to
business, especially since we had a new majority owner: Tomio Taki, who headed Takihyo of Nagoya, a two-hundred-year-old family-owned textile business in Japan. To help with design, I wanted to bring in my old friend Louis Dell’Olio from Parsons. We’d stayed in touch the best we could, given our horrendous work hours. Louis was now designing for Giorgini, a new sportswear division of the coat company Originala, a job my mother had helped him get, but I wanted to partner with him again, the way we had in school. I floated the idea with Anne.
She shook her head. “Three’s a bad number, Donna. It would be two against one when it comes to opinions and decisions. Let’s continue as we are.”
Despite my advancing pregnancy, I didn’t slow down. If anything, I took on more responsibility. There was a level of trust between me and Anne that I valued. I didn’t want to disappoint her; I wanted to help. Having Anne Klein believe in me was validating beyond words.
—
By October, Anne and I were in the design room, preparing for the famous Battle of Versailles of November 1973.
“My first ball ever, and look at me,” I cried, pointing to my pregnant middle, which was expanding by the minute. “What am I going to wear?”
“Wear something black,” Anne said. “You’ll be fine.”
Of all the extraordinary things I’ve done in my career, the ball and dueling fashion shows were the ultimate. It’s not an overstatement to say that this event changed the course of fashion. First, it put American fashion on the global map. Second, it introduced racial diversity to the runway.
It all started because the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, needed to raise money for restorations. Eleanor Lambert, the grand dame publicist of American fashion, came up with the idea of a fashion “battle,” where five American designers would compete against five French couturiers. The idea was almost laughable, because American fashion didn’t have an international presence of any kind. But Eleanor saw it as our chance to show the world what we were made of. Through sheer force of will, she spearheaded and orchestrated the whole thing. The Americans were Anne, Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, and the youngest of the group, Stephen Burrows. The French: Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, and Emanuel Ungaro. I was seven months pregnant at the time—huge!—but nothing could keep me away from this monumental black-tie ball.
