by Donna Karan
I didn’t realize it then, but I was fulfilling my destiny. I knew what I was doing. I was decisive. I had a vision! It was exhausting but at the same time effortless. It was such a mad, mad rush that I didn’t have time to think about how the collection would be received. Just putting it together drained all my energy. To keep up morale and build loyalty in the design room during those long days, I clowned around and ordered in great meals. My Jewish-mother instincts had kicked in. And Gabby was occasionally around for people to coo over.
Kay had an idea for the show’s music that involved a string of esoteric sounds. I went along with it until I realized it was my show and that such a soundtrack wasn’t right, so we changed it. That was an important moment. Not only did I have to design a collection on my own, but I had to conceptualize and direct how my clothes were shown. My vision, not Anne’s, was the one that counted. I ran with it. I added fedoras and ties and gave the whole thing a haberdashery feel.
I came to realize much later that I was operating in a bubble. While I was madly prepping for the show, all sorts of discussions were taking place on the corporate level. I’ll never know the whole story, but many people outside and inside the company, starting with Gunther Oppenheim, thought a more established designer should take the reins. Names were being tossed around. And I get it. We were talking about a huge business, with a lot of money at stake. I was a young, unknown quantity. Who knew what I was capable of? I had done one resort collection that had been a hit, but resort doesn’t represent an overall design vision, nor is it a moneymaker. Also, I was a new mother—maybe they thought I’d be distracted. In those days, many women quit their jobs after having a baby.
Tomio Taki, who had a controlling interest in the company, and had been a partner for only four and a half months when Anne died, bet on me. He felt I knew her vision better than anyone. “We’re going with Donna. I believe in her,” he said, ending the conversation. But the risk was too great for Gunther. He sold his share in the business to Takihyo. It wasn’t just me he was worried about; Gunther also questioned the future of the company under Chip Rubenstein. Gunther had been in it for Anne, and now she was gone.
Tomio transferred the respect he had for Anne to me. They had shared the belief that a good fit was everything. Tomio would say, “The color attracts the customer, the fabric makes her want to touch it, and the design can inspire her to bring it into the dressing room. But the right fit is what makes a woman actually buy the piece.” Tomio knew I had been trained by the best when it came to fit. He also knew I understood the value and versatility of an Anne Klein garment.
Thank God I didn’t know how much was riding on me in the days leading up to that show. People fought for invitations. The press wanted to support a house hit with sudden tragedy, of course. But there were plenty of curiosity-seekers, too. Who is this twenty-five-year-old kid named Donna Karan? Can she pull this off? Will there even be an Anne Klein & Co. after this? The fashion world was watching to see whether I would rise to the occasion or fall flat on my face.
On the day of the show, all my usual insecurities washed over me. Who was I to take on Anne’s legacy? Would everyone laugh at me for even trying? I was lucky I didn’t suffer a panic attack and that my face didn’t numb up as it had during that first trip abroad with Patti. I was seeing Dr. Rath every week, but even so I suffered from horrific gas pains and hyperventilation, where I’d get so scared I couldn’t breathe. None of that happened on the day of the show, but I was still a wreck. During the presentation in our showroom, I frantically fussed over each model before I let her walk out from behind the curtain, and I held my breath until I sent out the last girl. Then I started to cry. The clothes were out there for everyone to see. My work was done. I felt naked, exposed, and horribly vulnerable.
Then, out of the darkness, over the music, I could hear the sound of clapping, and the applause grew louder and louder. The reaction was immediate and overwhelming. Someone handed me a bouquet of white roses. The knitwear designer Margaretha Ley, who had flown in from Germany, gave me a white stuffed rabbit for Gabby. That set off more tears. When I stepped out onto the runway for my bow, people stood. Blinded by the lights and the emotion, I trembled and tried not to fall over. The collection was a hit. I was a hit! Buyers and journalists wanted to talk to me, interview me. Me!
The New York Times headline the next morning was “At Anne Klein, Young Designer Is Triumphant.” Women’s Wear Daily called it “first rate,” adding, “If Anne Klein was a great sportswear designer, she was just as great a teacher….Donna has learned her lesson well.” They raved about the “young, fresh touches” throughout. The retailers were just as effusive. Bill McElree of I. Magnin told WWD, “We don’t need one other collection. It’s the greatest group of clothes I have seen in my 20 years of retailing.” In the same article, Saks Fifth Avenue’s Rae Crespin said, “It was fantastic. Absolute perfection in sportswear.” The whole day, I was flying, and I also couldn’t stop crying. All the bottled-up tension, heightened by my hormones, came gushing out of me. The show had put to rest any lingering doubts: I was the official heir apparent to Anne Klein. Takihyo signed me to a twelve-year contract.
—
Given my youth and inexperience, I was hardly prepared for what followed. Women’s Wear Daily sought to interview me right away. Our company hired a limousine to pick up me and the reporter, Keitha McLean, from the Anne Klein offices at 205 West 39th Street. When we went down to the street, I saw the limo coming and raised my arm, the way you would hail a taxi. Wrong limo. When my car did appear, I got in before the driver had a chance to walk around and open my door. All in front of Keitha. We rode to Le Cirque for lunch, and the minute we walked in, I asked her if she knew where the “famous, important people” sat, and whether she saw any celebrities. I couldn’t stop talking, and I said whatever came to my mind. The gem of the interview was this line about designing clothes: “What can really be glamorous about a rag you put between your legs?”
That quote was the lead of the WWD article introducing me to the fashion industry as the woman behind Anne Klein & Co.’s fall collection. The two pull-out quotes in the same article were: “I’m from Lawrence, Long Island, so what do I know?” and “I want to get très chic.” Yep, I was a little rough around the edges.
I was also invited onto the Today show with Barbara Walters, along with Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta. Barbara’s office asked me to do the honor of dressing her. I told them I’d rather she pick out the outfit, but apparently there wasn’t time for that, so I sent up one of our signature looks: a jacket, a shirt, a vest, and a skirt—very layered, very booty. On the show, I asked, “Barbara, so how do you feel in our clothes?”
“Honestly, I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in my life,” she answered, before cutting to a commercial. My smile froze.
—
What you learn quickly in fashion is that you’re only as good as your last collection. There’s no time to stop and enjoy your success, not when everyone’s asking, “What’s next? What’s new?” A tiny part of me wished the first show hadn’t gone so well. The bar was set so high—what if I couldn’t do it again? The fall 1974 collection may have been a hit, but it had taken everything out of me. I needed to be at home with my baby—or at least strike a balance in my life. At that time, collections were huge, maybe a hundred runway looks with another hundred discards (pieces that don’t make the collection), versus the forty or so looks we show today. I was desperate for Louis to join me, and when he did, a month later, I was euphoric. He was the answer to my prayers: enormously talented, a fabulous friend, and funny—you have no idea. We plunged right in. My first order of business was to announce that we were co-designers. I wanted no ambiguity. We’d rise as a team or fall as a team.
People often asked how we worked together. In a nutshell, we were completely codependent. We sat facing each other across a large desk in the design room. We were always together, talking, bouncing ideas off each other, and cracking up. Louis w
as dramatic and artistic, and I’d provide the real-woman reality check, reminding him that we just want to look and feel good in our clothes. He did the classic tailoring; I sculpted to the body. He took care of the color and embellishments; I was the fabric and texture person. It was a perfect balance of skills. Louis’s MO was create, create, create, and mine was edit, edit, edit. Louis did all the sketching and could design thirty-six dresses in no time. I’d say, “I like this, this, and that.” Basta!
On a practical level, Louis handled the day-to-day details, and I was big-picture about the brand, the licensees, and our image. He was the more organized one (no surprise) and made sure the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed. Because of him, I could catch an earlier train home and see my baby. While I was the workingwoman in the city, Mark was Gabby’s primary caregiver. His job was flexible; he could come and go as needed. We also had a full-time nanny named Linda, whom we called “Inda.” She was from Barbados, and Gabby adored her. In fact, I constantly worried that Gabby loved Inda more than me. Then came what was truly the worst moment of my life. I was at home in Lawrence, coming down the stairs, holding Gabby. I was wearing bell-bottom pants and platform shoes, and suddenly Felix raced passed us and tripped me. Gabby fell out of my arms and landed on the floor. I must have screamed, because Mark, who was on the toilet, ran out without pants and picked her up. For a terrifying and very long moment, Gabby was perfectly still. Everything about this awful accident spoke to my worst fears and inadequacies. I suffered from the guilt of being a terrible mother and of not being home more with my baby—a guilt born the day Anne Klein died.
My biggest challenge at work those days was dealing with Betty Hanson, our head of sales. Her relationship with Anne went all the way back to 1938, when Betty was a model and Anne was an assistant designer to the dress and suit designer Mollie Parnis. She believed she knew the Anne Klein brand better than anyone, and in her mind she was now in charge. Chip, who was president, was loyal to Louis and me but deferred to Betty given her proven success as sales manager. Tomio, in Japan, wasn’t there to referee. We were all feeling our way forward, but Betty made it clear that she wanted everything to stay just as it had been when Anne was alive.
Louis and I had other ideas. We wanted to modernize the fit of the clothes and eliminate vanity sizing, where size numbers are reduced to make a woman feel smaller. We wanted to use softer, more sensuous fabrics. And we wanted sexy proportions. I was young. I wanted clothes cut to the body with more leg happening. I also loved the idea of a man’s jacket tailored for a woman—just like my father had done for my mother.
Louis and I would arrange the showroom the way we wanted the collection to sell, pairing our favorite separates and putting them in a particular order of preference. and later we’d find colored notes all over the racks. One of the salespeople told us that Betty had instructed them to sell only pieces with her colored notes. She undermined us any way she could. Admittedly, one of our first collections together ventured too far from the Anne Klein look. A resort collection, it was all raw silk and crepe de chine, everything relaxed and softly constructed. The press and retailers were polite, but you could tell they didn’t get it. We were crushed, but we knew we had to believe in ourselves and keep moving forward.
—
In September 1975, Tomio brought in Frank Mori as our new president. Frank was young and handsome, maybe thirty-five, with a Harvard MBA but no Seventh Avenue experience. He came from Hanes, where he had been executive vice president at Bali, the bra and intimates division. The introduction wasn’t smooth. Tomio just showed up with Frank one day, and jaws dropped, since Chip wasn’t planning to leave. Takihyo wanted Chip to remain as founder, but with no actual power.
There were too many cooks in the kitchen now, and Louis and I were miserable. Betty continued bossing us around, and then she went a step too far and insisted we design a pre-fall collection. This had been an ongoing disagreement, as I felt pre-fall collections were unnecessary and only served to shorten the time we could work on fall. She overruled me, saying we needed to fill a hole between store deliveries with a capsule (mini) line. I was exhausted, and doing an additional collection—even a small one—was out of the question.
We called a meeting. Tomio, Frank, Betty, Chip, and Julie sat on one side of the table; Louis and I sat on the other. It got heated, and Betty didn’t back down.
“That’s it. I quit,” I finally said.
Louis threw a chair against the wall. “I quit, too,” he said. He grabbed my hand, and we got our coats and left the building.
I felt so empowered! We headed to Bill’s, the fashion insider bar and lunch spot across the street. As strong as we felt, we were shaking like leaves. The phone at the bar rang, and Carolyn, the owner, picked it up.
“Are you two here?” she asked, her hand covering the mouthpiece.
“No,” we said in unison, smiling like two naughty schoolkids.
Soon after, Julie came in looking for us. “Mr. Taki wants to make this right. What can he do to make you come back?”
“Easy. It’s us or Betty.”
Tomio and Frank made it right. Betty left to open her own firm, which Gunther financed. Anne Klein & Co.’s design direction now belonged solely to Louis and me.
—
It was time to prepare our second fall show. By now, we were feeling seasoned and confident and loved what we were working on. We wanted to create a show that would signal to the world that there was a new team and a new look behind the Anne Klein name. At this time, designers were starting to show outside their showrooms, and we heard that Oscar de la Renta was planning to show at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
“How about we do a Broadway theater?” I asked.
We had a connection to the Shubert Organization, which led us to the Winter Garden Theatre. Stephen Sondheim’s musical Pacific Overtures was playing there, so we could only book a Monday, when the theater was dark. It would cost a fortune, as we’d have to hire all the theater’s union employees and choreographers. Remarkably, Frank and Tomio were on board for the money. But there was another price: we’d have to give up creative control. The theater people would stage the show, select the music, everything. Other than provide the models and clothes, all Louis and I could do was watch and worry.
Our first chance to rehearse at the theater was the morning of the show. “Sit down and have some faith,” the choreographer told us. A dancer dressed like a lion ran out and pulled the curtain open, and that was the only successful part of the rehearsal. The models couldn’t make their changes in time, so many came out half dressed. The choreography confused some of the girls, and a few went in the wrong direction, causing collisions.
“Women’s Wear Daily is going to cream us,” Louis whispered, his thick brows knitted in concern. He was right to be worried; the paper was already criticizing designers for using these venues, and ours was the splashiest of all. But there was nothing we could do about it now. The theater was packed, all fourteen hundred seats filled. Louis, Frank, and I sat on the third balcony. We had decided that if the show was a disaster, we’d slip out quickly and go have a drink. We’d even chosen the bar.
But it went perfectly, just like in Versailles. The props were sensational: floor-to-ceiling Mylar screens, blossoming cherry trees, fake horses galloping across the stage. The finale was set to the music of Boléro. One by one, models marched out, slowly filling the entire stage. It could have been the height of pretension, but instead the effects enhanced the clothes, rather than distracting from them. The music ended, and there was a second of dead silence. We thought the audience was getting up to leave, and then they started applauding and screaming “Bravo!” I looked at Frank and Louis, tears streaming down my face. It was my Sally Field moment: “Oh my God! They like us! They really like us!”
We received rave review after rave review, starting with WWD’s. “Anne Klein Goes Broadway: Fall Line Joins Chorus Line,” said the New York Times, which also noted that the buyers h
ad put down their pens to enjoy the show. Between my solo show and this one, we had stepped out from behind the shadow of Anne Klein.
A year or so after Frank joined the company, Chip sold his share to Takihyo. Now Takihyo owned the business, with Frank given a minority percentage as CEO and president. I was sad to see Chip go, because he was my connection to Anne. But it wasn’t his company anymore. It’s hard to stay in a place you once ran—or, as he said to People magazine, to “live in the dead past.”
—
Chip. Sandy. Gunther. Anne Klein. Both my fathers. Even Stephan. You’d think that with all the sudden goodbyes I’d faced in recent years, I’d get used to it. But you never do.
In the summer of 1976, I was home in Lawrence with Gabby when Felix, our gorgeous dog, came bounding into the house. He jumped up, grabbed me with his paws, then fell down and died right in front of me. We think he may have been poisoned—Felix was always escaping over our fence and terrorizing the neighborhood. Whatever caused him to die so suddenly, I was traumatized and unprepared. My big goofy dog, my first baby, my living, breathing connection to Stephan, was gone.
Credit 7.1
Credit 7.2
8
FRIENDS FOR LIFE
After the Winter Garden collection, our press office was swamped with requests for fashion editorials and interviews. Louis and I were featured in Vogue, while Mark, Gabby (now three), and I were in the New York Daily News. Months later, in 1977, Louis and I were nominated for the Winnie, the top Coty Award. The Cotys were the Oscars of fashion, the precursors of today’s CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) Fashion Awards. There was even buzz that we could actually win.
Queenie was over the moon. My successes in the fashion industry were a source of tremendous pride; she viewed them as part of her own legacy. I was happy she was happy, but I didn’t want her in the limousine with us; I was tense enough. She was hurt and even threatened not to come, but I didn’t believe her.
