by Donna Karan
The night of the ceremony, held at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I did my hair up in a bun and wore a pale beige crinkle crepe wrap top with matching harem-style pants that narrowed at the ankle. The organizers seated us in the front row with Tomio and Frank. Mark, my sister, Gail, and her husband, Hank, were behind us, with an empty seat next to Mark for Queenie. I kept looking for her and couldn’t understand how she could be late. Then Frank came over. “Donna, you have to come see this,” he said. I followed him to the window, looked down, and spotted my mother blowing kisses to the crowd from a horse and buggy—the kind tourists ride around Central Park. She wore a long black dress with a slit up the side and a feathered boa draped over her shoulder. The queen had arrived.
Louis and I won a Winnie, as did Stephen Burrows, my friend from Versailles. After hugging everyone around me, I ran to the pay phone—no cells in those days—and called Dr. Rath. I knew he would understand what this meant to me.
—
As collaborators, Louis and I had a deal: we would never say no to each other. If one of us truly believed in something, we would go for it. If it made sense, it would stay in the collection; if it didn’t, we’d throw it out. But we had to agree in the end. It was the only way we could work together. Outside of the design studio, Louis was patient and nurturing, and got me out of more than a few scrapes. Once, when we were in our late twenties and finding our way in the world, we went to Paris to shop for ideas. We checked into the Hotel de Crillon, an eighteenth-century palace at the foot of the Champs-Elysées, and selected a Marie Antoinette–style salon with two bedrooms, me in one room, Louis and our designer friends Maurice Antaya and Richard Assatly (who would go on to design Anne Klein II with us) in the other. We shopped until we dropped, buying all sorts of pieces—some designer, some not—that could spark an idea. Along the way, one of us (okay, me) got the bright idea to deliver and charge all our purchases to the hotel. That way, we wouldn’t have to worry about money or schlepping bags while we bounced around the city.
When Louis went to check out on the morning of our departure, he was asked for approximately $20,000—in cash. Apparently, the hotel had paid in francs for our purchases, and because of the value-added tax and conversion rates, it wanted hard currency in return. Louis came rushing into the suite and found me, Maurice, and Richard lounging in the hotel’s plush terry robes and eating a decadent breakfast.
“We’ve got a real problem,” he said. “We have to come up with $20K or we’ll be cleaning rooms here for the rest of our lives.”
“Don’t worry,” I said calmly, placing my cup back into its saucer. “I’ll call Frank and ask him to wire us the money.”
“What did you buy?” Frank screamed so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Before I could answer, he hung up on me.
Right at that moment, our Parsons friend Linda Fox came into the room with her French boyfriend, Jacques. We explained our predicament, and he assured us we could work something out with the front desk. I don’t know what Jacques said, but sure enough, we were able to put our purchases on a credit card after all.
I called Frank to tell him all was fine.
“Fine?” he screamed. “You spent $20,000!”
As we packed, I told everyone to cut the labels out of our purchases to avoid declaring them—yet another bright idea. We had shipped a lot of it, but I wanted some pieces right when I got home.
We landed at JFK, and there were Mark and Gabby, waving from the other side of the glass dividers. Louis sailed through, no problem. Me they detained and led into a small room.
“Why are you stopping me?” My voice was loud, my heart pumping. “Do I look like a drug dealer?” I showed them my clean arms.
Then they dragged Louis into the room with me. I was still shouting and talking, shouting and talking, mostly because I was scared. Louis just rolled his eyes, exasperated.
“You’ve been traveling with this woman for two weeks?” the customs agent asked Louis.
“Yes,” he sighed. “And you can imagine how anxious I am to get home without her.”
They released us. I went home to Lawrence and hid our purchases under the sofas and mattresses, in the attic, and in the china closet, convinced that federal marshals would come knocking at the door.
—
Louis and I were now considered to be in the top rank of American sportswear designers, up there with Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, and Calvin Klein. Calvin’s offices were in our building on West 39th Street, and because of his last name and boyish looks, many people thought he was Anne Klein’s son. Calvin and I weren’t especially close back then (now we’re the best of friends), but I’d run into him often in the elevators and at various fashion events. Calvin was notoriously focused, with absolute control over everything he did. He was also the essence of cool, with his edgy ad campaigns and Studio 54 nights. I was definitely not cool. I was still the awkward, uncensored Long Island girl I always was.
“Calvin,” I said to him one day, “listen, I’ve got this great idea. Since we’re both Kleins, how about if we combine the two collections, call it Klein, and you do fall and we do spring? We’d each get half the year off!”
He smiled politely. “Are you crazy? I love working. I’m not looking for time off.”
I don’t think he got my goofy humor, and that was okay. I didn’t mind not being one of the cool kids. My personal life always mattered more.
I met Patti Cohen, my great friend and publicist of almost thirty-five years, on a tennis court. It was the summer of 1976, and Mark had rented a house in Sea View, Fire Island. We’d spend one month there and another month renting Perry Ellis’s home in the Pines, where Louis also had a house. Fire Island was my escape, a place for happy family time under the sun.
I decided to take up tennis because everyone out there seemed to play. I went to the local club, where they were assigning partners, and no one picked me. No one picked a sweet, cute, down-to-earth redhead in tennis whites, either.
“Hi, I’m Donna.” I held out my hand to Patti. “I guess it’s just us.”
We hit it off immediately, on the court and off. Patti said I was exhausting to play with because my arms and legs were so long I could reach the ball in one or two steps. But, as a lefty, she had a killer backhand. We agreed to play together every Saturday morning at eleven. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get in touch with her, so I stood her up the very next weekend. When I saw her the following Saturday, I told her why.
“I had a work thing. I had to go meet the queen of England at Bloomingdale’s.” I shrugged. Patti thought I was insane, as she knew me only as Donna, her new tennis partner.
(I had met the queen of England at Bloomingdale’s, along with Louis, Calvin, and Ralph Lauren. It was July 9, a couple of months after our Winter Garden show; she was in the country as part of the United States’ 1976 bicentennial celebration and wanted to have a New York experience. We were invited to meet her and present our designs. Louis and I took the subway from our office on West 39th Street so we could stand and avoid wrinkling our clothes. I wore a pale blue linen little jacket, a skirt, and heels. Because of the linen jacket, I held on to the pole as to not crease my sleeve. I also wore a fedora and gloves. Some guy on the subway saw us and said, “Where you going? You look like you’re going to meet the queen of England.” “We are!” we replied.)
Patti and her husband, Harvey, became great friends to Mark and me. We summered together, traveled together, and went out all the time. Harvey was in his family’s paper business, but Patti didn’t work.
“What do you do all day?” I asked, fascinated.
“I shop,” she laughed. She was my kind of gal. I love working with friends, and I wanted to bring her into the fold. I just hadn’t figured out how.
—
After our Winter Garden show, the company grew by leaps and bounds, and Frank managed it all well. Everyone was knocking on our door, offering us licensees. There was already an Anne Klein Studio, a de
partment spread across a floor where we designed all the Anne Klein licensee products. But Louis and I wanted to control it better. In 1977, we called the interior designer Burt Wayne, my style mentor since Anne’s death.
“Uncle Burt, darling, I need you—full-time,” I said. “You have to head up the Design Studio. You won’t believe how much we have going on here.”
“I do homes, Donna, not handbags and shoes,” Burt sniffed. He wore huge diamonds and long fur coats and had his copper hair colored and blown. His Connecticut home was a mini Versailles.
“Okay, and now you’ll also do those furs and jewelry you love so much, and a few other things, too. Think of all the fun we’ll have.”
I had him at “furs.” Burt was named president of the Studio, and his life and business partner, John Doktor, was named creative director. Together, they oversaw a world of Anne Klein–licensed knitwear, coats, scarves, eyewear, watches, umbrellas, intimates, menswear, handbags, and shoes. Louis and I touched it all, following Anne’s mantra: “Good design is good design. It’s as important in a toothbrush and a hospital gown as it is in an evening dress.”
With its tremendous output, Anne Klein Studio was a perfect place to engage and launch all the new designers we were now mentoring and critiquing at Parsons, including Narciso Rodriguez and Edward Wilkerson, the chief designer for the sportswear company 148 Lafayette and Xiomara Grossett, who went on to become an integral part of Donna Karan New York. Other young designers, such as Cynthia Steffe, Rozann “Ro” Marsi, and Jane Chung, came straight from Parsons to work with us. (Rozann and Jane worked with me for more than thirty years. Jane is to me what I was to Anne Klein: a protégé, a colleague, a daughter, and a great friend, though she’s the short one and I’m the tall one. We fit into the same jackets, but not the same bottoms.)
Even though I was in my early thirties, I thought of these designers as my children. Because Anne was so good to me, I tried—and still do try—to give back. I’ve hosted countless birthday parties and baby showers and attended just about every wedding, including Xio’s, an almost-two-hour Catholic ceremony in the South Bronx on a snowy night. I go to brises, baptisms, and anything else that celebrates a personal milestone. (Edward, my former assistant, still jokes that I may forget your name, but I’ll remember to throw you a birthday party, even if I’m out of the country.) Like Anne did with me, I’d invite our designers to my beach house and hold meetings in my apartment, where I’d serve nutritious food. If someone’s sick, I make sure they get chicken soup and send them to my doctor. I don’t just mother, I smother.
—
I lack boundaries in other areas, too. For instance, just about everyone I’ve worked with has seen my breasts. It may seem an odd thing to mention, but everyone else mentions it, so I feel I should explain. I’m a very hands-on designer—I love to try on everything—and I happen not to wear a bra. Never have. First it was because I was a free spirit, but then I started to wear a bodysuit for yoga every day and a bra was redundant (besides, I hated the strap across my back). I need to feel the clothes on my body. How does something drape? Can I move in it? Does the fabric give? Yes, I could use a model, but it’s so much better when I use myself. Edward says I was the first naked woman he’d ever seen. Ro’s teenage brother was stunned when he walked into the design room and met me topless. I offered my hand, forgetting my bare boobs and nude hose. This happened more than thirty years ago, and he still talks about it. Narciso once thought he walked in on a private moment between Louis and me. He froze, unable to take another step. “Don’t just stand there,” I said impatiently. “Come on in. What do you need?”
One time, Frank asked me where models could change. He was dating one named Peggy and wanted her to have some privacy. I was probably topless when I said, “Seriously, Frank? This is a design room!” Louis swears there wasn’t an editor from that period who didn’t see my boobs. We’d be showing the line, and I’d tear off one top to pull on another. Ro became my cover-upper, handing me a cashmere robe when executives or other non-designers came into the room. I should add that male designers try on women’s clothes, too, including the heels. Trust me. I’ve seen it firsthand many times, not that I’m going to mention names or instances. And I don’t blame them. It’s all part of the creative process.
As a designer, I am always creating. Everything talks to me. First and foremost, fabric. But the sun talks to me, too. The flashing lights on the street talk to me. The rocks on the beach talk to me. It’s actually hard to have so much visual stimuli talking to me. I look at the beach, and I see the wet part and the dry part. The wet is more yellow, the dry is more blue. Warm versus cold. I’ve brought rocks with me to Europe and wet them so the mills know what I’m talking about. I once traveled with a potato because I loved the color variation of its skin. And then there was the time in Italy when I discovered the most perfect color gray ever in the toilet paper at an Autogrill, one of the rest areas on the autostrada.
When you’re in that zone, you forget yourself. I cut off Louis’s tie once—it was the most vibrant shade of red and perfect for resort, so I helped myself to a fabric swatch. Another time, my great friend and shoe designer Andrea Pfister’s partner, Jean-Pierre Dupre, came to lunch in the most beautiful fuchsia cashmere sweater and linen pants; I needed samples of both. Patti’s husband, Harvey, has lost a couple of Japanese jackets because I needed to dissect the construction. Edward came to work one day in to-die-for plaid pants. I tried snapping them with a Polaroid camera and even had him sit on a Xerox machine. When nothing else worked, I reached for the scissors. I recently persuaded a young woman at my favorite juice store to snip off a piece of her teal-colored hair. It’s going to make an amazing sweater.
—
Then there are the people who inspire me. Let’s start at the top: Barbra Streisand. I know, I know. Every man, woman, and child on the planet loves Barbra Streisand. Since I was a young teenager, I have related to her on a visceral level. I cut my hair into a bob like hers and dressed like her. I listened to her music all the time, deeply connecting to the soul and emotion behind her mesmerizing voice. I aspired to be her. She was a strong, glamorous, creative, Jewish, unconventional-looking woman from New York who made it big. She was my idol. I couldn’t imagine ever meeting her, but I desperately wanted to. Thanks to my friend Ilene Wetson, I finally did.
It was late 1977, and Ilene called me at work. “I’m with Barbra Streisand, and if dreams can come true, I’m going to deliver yours.”
Ilene was dating a guy named Joachim Springer (whom she went on to marry), whose brother Karl Springer was a famous luxury furniture designer. Barbra was in Karl’s showroom, and Ilene went up to her and said she had a designer friend who would love to meet her. Barbra happened to have just bought a raisin-colored fur coat that Louis and I designed for our licensee, Michael Forrest, a furrier. She had also fallen in love with a chenille sweater I designed that was featured on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Yes, she told Ilene, she’d love to meet me.
I froze with fear. “But Ilene, who is going to pay for what she picks out?” The fact that my mind jumped to something so trivial shows you how flustered I was.
“Do you want to meet her or not?” Ilene asked. “I can send her over tomorrow.”
This was far bigger than meeting Queen Elizabeth. Barbra was my royalty. We cleaned the showroom and canceled all appointments. I had my hair and makeup done. Since we were showing our spring collection at work, I brought all my fall clothes from my personal closet and set them up in the design room. When she arrived, an assistant walked her into Frank’s office so I could greet her there.
When I entered, Barbra’s back was to me. I took a deep breath. “Hi, I’m Donna.”
Like a scene out of a movie, Barbra turned around slowly and smiled. “Hello,” she said in the most recognizable voice on earth. I was taken aback by how short she appeared (she’s 5′5″). I was expecting a six-foot goddess.
“I’m overcome,” I said. “I need to sit
down and have a Valium or something.”
Barbra smiled. “I have your raisin fur coat,” she said, “and I’d love something to match it. Like one of those chenille sweaters I recently saw in a magazine.”
This would not be possible. A month earlier, I’d worn one of those sweaters to Dr. Rath’s office. The cigarette I was smoking had set it on fire, and that was how we’d realized they were highly flammable. My mind flashed to Gail’s pajamas catching on fire when we were kids.
“I have some great pieces laid out in my design room to show you,” I said, hoping to distract her.
But on the way, we had to pass the shipping room, and wouldn’t you know it, maybe twenty-five or so of those chenille sweaters, just recalled from stores, were spread out on the floor.
“Yes, yes, this is the sweater I want,” said Barbra, entering the room and dropping to her knees to pick one up.
“Unfortunately, we just found out it’s quite flammable,” I said, imagining Barbra Streisand bursting into flames at Studio 54. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish, but no. You really can’t have one.”
“I want the sweater.” The Voice turned steely.
I don’t know how we got through that meeting, but we did. Despite giving her many of my own personal fall pieces, I could tell she was distracted and fixated on the sweater that got away.
The next day, she called me and said, “I really would like the chenille sweater.”
“No. I told you, I can’t take that chance.”
“This is ridiculous. May I have the name of the yarn supplier? I’ll call them myself and have it knitted up.”
“I can’t.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“All right,” she said. “I have an idea. I will draft a legal waiver indemnifying you and the company should the sweater catch fire. How’s that?”
