by Donna Karan
I never saw the document, nor did I send the sweater. But my dear friend says she still has that sweater. (Who knows how she got it?) Months later, she was on the cover of a magazine wearing one of our nonflammable off-the-shoulder sequined sweaters with those gorgeous legs of hers. And a chenille hat on her head.
When Barbra gets something in her head, she will move heaven and earth to make it happen. I knew I had met my match—and my soul sister.
Barbra, Louis, Patti, Jane—they were all soul matches. When you first make friends with someone, you never know if it’s for life, but these people came along for a reason and quickly became family to me—the kind of family I never had.
Credit 8.1
9
REUNITED
As much as my life had changed with my recent successes, I was still a suburban working mom taking the Long Island Rail Road to and from the city. I was on the train one morning when I heard a familiar voice say my name. I looked up to see Eric Weiss, Stephan’s younger brother.
I hadn’t seen him in years, and we quickly caught up. He told me that Stephan was still single and that he was living downtown and using a studio in Long Island City. “If you speak to him, tell him to give me a call,” I said, trying to sound casual.
Stephan called that very morning, and we arranged to meet up that night. It was February, ten years to the month after we first met, and there was a major snowstorm brewing. History repeated itself. I couldn’t get out of Manhattan. I called Mark and told him I had worked late and was staying with Burt.
Stephan and I met and walked down Central Park West in the snow. In the four or so years since I had last seen him, he hadn’t changed at all. Neither had our connection. It was instant and passionate, as if no time had passed.
Stephan was still married. His wife refused to grant him a divorce, and he’d chosen not to fight her. He was working in his father’s business more and more. Money was a constant issue, so he wasn’t able to devote much time to his art, which tore at him. But he was still traveling to Long Island every Tuesday night to see his shrink and visit his kids.
I couldn’t believe we’d found each other again, and this time I wasn’t letting go. You wouldn’t think I would have time for an affair: I was a successful designer with endless deadlines. I was mother to a four-year-old daughter whom I didn’t see enough of. And I had this ridiculous train commute. But I made the time.
My life quickly turned into a comedy of errors. Louis and my assistants were already on Queenie patrol, because she was constantly calling or popping in. My assistant, Ro, would answer, and my mother would say, “Don’t let Donna know I’m on the phone,” at which point I would signal to Ro to say I wasn’t there. Queenie would then hammer poor Ro with questions about what we were doing. With Stephan back in the picture, the studio phone became the Peyton Place hotline. He would call, and I would slip out to meet him somewhere. Mark would call asking what train I was making that night. And my mother, now suspicious something was going on, would call and grill Ro about where I was, where I’d been, and whether she knew my plans for the night.
Louis and Ro were my beards, and Uncle Burt was my confidant. We’d talk through the night on the phone, not that we reached any conclusions. I honestly didn’t know what to do. This was no longer just a love triangle. I also had Gabby to consider.
It wasn’t like Mark and I were unhappy. We were truly best friends. He was the most easygoing, supportive man on earth. We had a great life together and rarely argued, which only made things harder. I didn’t often see Gabby in daylight anymore, and my commute was getting to me, so we decided to move into the city. Mark was apartment hunting for us, scouting out dozens of places. I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. He called me at work one day, very excited. “I found it—the perfect apartment. It’s huge! You’ve got to get here ASAP.”
“Do we really want to rush into this now, Mark? I have so much going on with the fall collection…,” I said, trying to stall.
“What are you talking about, Donna?” Mark said. “We’ve been planning this forever.”
I met him at the apartment at 211 East 70th Street, and he was right: it was perfect. Palatial by Manhattan standards, it was a three-bedroom that had been attached to a studio apartment. An actress had lived there. I couldn’t come up with a reason not to go for it and immediately called Uncle Burt for ideas on how to pull it together. He knew about Stephan, but he also knew it was useless to talk me out of the apartment. Mark and I put the Lawrence house on the market.
Confusion, passion, sadness, love, guilt—I cycled through those feelings all the time. Yet I couldn’t and wouldn’t give up Stephan, the center of my emotional turmoil. I even asked him to design a set for our fall show. Given the nature of his family business, it would give him a legitimate reason to be around, and I knew it would be fabulous. Louis was on board. He didn’t judge me because he knew how much I loved Stephan, how much I had always loved Stephan.
Besides, our affair was my greatest inspiration for the collection. The clothes dripped raw sensuality: Fur coats. Skin on skin. Big, seductive cashmere cardigans. Satin wrap shirts. Suede jodhpurs and palazzo pants. Skirts with thigh-high slits. All in earthy shades of vicuña, camel, wine, and gold. Each piece was so modern, so timeless, so chic, I’d wear any one of them today.
Finding a way to be alone with Stephan was another story. His downtown apartment was disgusting, so Uncle Burt let us use his opulent Connecticut home. I would tell Mark I was with my sister in Queens, and then Gail was stuck covering for me, which was especially tricky because she worked with Mark two days a week as a bookkeeper and assistant manager. Gail liked Stephan; you couldn’t not like Stephan. But she was less than thrilled to lie to Mark, who was family.
My old friend Ilene Wetson was an unknowing godsend. She had just moved in with her boyfriend Joachim, and her apartment on 64th and First was empty. I asked if I could stay there while we renovated the East 70th Street apartment. Her only condition was that I not lose the key, a real possibility with me. Every time we spoke after that, she’d ask me about the key, and I’d say, “All good.”
When she came to the fall 1978 Anne Klein show and saw the big, organic stretch fabric backdrops on stage, she knew. She looked up at the projection box, and there was Stephan, smiling down at us.
“Of course you didn’t lose the key, Donna,” she said, hitting my arm. “Stephan’s been living there the whole time!”
One night Stephan whispered to me in bed, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” It was the first time he had ever said it, and I felt like I was floating. This whirlwind affair was turning serious for him. It certainly was for me.
—
The Friday before Mother’s Day that year, 1978, I saw Dr. Rath and couldn’t stop crying. I loved Mark, and we had created a beautiful, perfect child. How could I destroy our family? But I knew that I was making everything worse by deceiving him. If I could have pulled back from Stephan, I would have. But he was my north star. I was drawn to him with every cell in my being.
Just as I had poured out my heart to Harold all those years ago, I told Dr. Rath I knew what I had to do, but that I didn’t have the strength or the courage.
“You can do this, Donna,” he said. “I’m going to call Mark and have him come in right now. You will speak with him today, in front of me.”
Incredibly, Dr. Rath was Mark’s psychiatrist, too. He was also my mother’s, something I found out years later. (Gabby and I have gone to the same psychiatrist, too. It must be a family thing.) At the time, Mark was working at Gabby’s, his new Cedarhurst shop that sold only Anne Klein clothes. My sister, Gail, was there as assistant manager when Dr. Rath called, and it was she who answered the phone.
There’s no easy way to end a marriage. The details of that meeting have long escaped me—they were far too painful to keep. All I remember is that I was crying, and Dr. Rath was comforting Mark, who was in shock. I felt awful, and, as stupid as it sounds, I wanted
to protect Mark. He was completely blindsided. He had had no idea I was seeing Stephan, not a clue. I wanted to do anything to fix it, to soothe it, to make it better. But I couldn’t, of course. I had to sit there and own my betrayal. Mark left first. He later told me that he was so angry and devastated he wanted to run me over with his car. My sister was waiting for him at the store. She said he returned a different person—white as a ghost. Then he broke down.
Mark stayed at Gail and Hank’s for the weekend. He cried the whole time.
—
Out of guilt, I gave Mark everything. The Lawrence house. My interest in the store. The cars. I only wanted one thing: a pair of beautiful, worn-in cowboy boots we’d shared (we were roughly the same size). I called Mark from a pay phone to ask him to give them to Gail for me.
“Nothing doing, Donna,” he said. “They’re mine.”
“I’ve given you everything I own, and you won’t give me a pair of boots?”
“That’s right.”
“You shit.” I slammed down the phone. We weren’t exactly even, but it felt good to be angry about something.
After several back-and-forths, Mark came home, and I moved in with Gail and Hank for a while, sleeping on their sofa, until my lawyer told me I could lose Gabby if I stayed away too long. So Mark and I alternated staying at Gail’s until the city apartment was ready. Gail let me know that Mark was having a tough time, but boots aside, he was very cooperative—especially when it came to Gabby, who would be starting school in September. He even let me and Stephan have the East 70th Street apartment.
That summer Gabby stayed with Mark in Lawrence and went to camp during the week, and I gradually introduced her to Stephan. We’d pick her up with Stephan’s kids and go riding at a nearby dude ranch, or take her to an amusement park. In September, Gabby, now four, moved with me and Stephan into the new city apartment and started school. It was going to be all right.
Only Queenie was unforgiving. She loved Mark, really loved him, and refused to meet Stephan. “Mark is your husband, Donna,” she told me. “Stephan is a married man with two children. I want nothing to do with him.”
—
Uncle Burt helped us design a beautiful apartment, my first city home. Vicuña suede sofas, Coromandel screens, a huge mirror with two plush chairs in front—it was chic, simple, and warm. (Years later, I realized how much it looked like Coco Chanel’s apartment. It must have been a coincidence, because Burt, who had since died, would have been the first to tell me if that was his inspiration.) We had Gabby’s room, the nanny’s room, and a den-like room we could use when Stephan’s kids visited. The studio became our large master bedroom; I removed its kitchen and replaced it with a big walkin closet.
Gabby adored Stephan from the beginning. Corey and Lisa, Stephan’s kids, lived with their mother but visited all the time. Their home life was difficult and unstable because their mother acted bipolar (called manic-depressive at the time) and could be irrational on occasion—kind of like my mother. The kids viewed their stays with us as an escape. Stephan and I wanted them to feel like part of our primary family, never as visiting stepchildren. I’d always say, “This is an apartment. There are no ‘steps’ here.”
For a single man, Stephan was a very hands-on dad. Corey was a young teenager, around thirteen, and going through the typical acting-out stage. He later admitted that he was probably angry at Stephan for creating a whole new life and being a full-time father to Gabby. Lisa was eleven and madly in love with Gabby, whom she treated like a doll come to life. They were inseparable. (I’m not proud to admit this, but I was jealous of just how much Gabby loved Lisa. I was jealous of anyone Gabby loved.) To Lisa and Corey, I was the cool stepmom. I had the fun car, great clothes, and uncensored personality. We clicked in a very organic way.
—
Even Stephan’s wife, Dale, came around to accept his new life. She looked forward to seeing Gabby when we visited the kids. She still wouldn’t grant him a divorce, but I didn’t care; I was as married to Stephan as a woman could be. Then, on Valentine’s Day, 1979, he went all the way. I was on a fabric-shopping trip in Paris when I got the Western Union telegram.
DON’T BE ALARMED. BUT WITH THIS TELEGRAM I AM ARMED TO ANNOUNCE MY LOVE FOR YOU. THIS CHANCE I WILL TAKE THAT YOUR LOVES NO FAKE AND THAT MY WIFE YOU WILL CHOOSE TO BE. THE PRECEDING HAS BEEN A FORMAL REQUEST OF MARRIAGE. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY. LOVE YOU. STEVE
I screamed; I cried; I melted; and then I immediately called him to say yes. We both knew it was up to Dale when and if we’d marry. But it was still nice to call him my fiancé.
—
Six months later, Queenie became ill. She had always been a hypochondriac, so it was hard to know when to believe her. But this was real. First the doctors thought it was her appendix; then they thought it was her ovaries. Weeks later, when they discovered it was cancer, it had spread throughout her stomach.
Gail took her to every doctor’s appointment. A month after her diagnosis, the cancer worsened, and we checked her into Valley Stream Hospital. Gail, saint that she was, visited every day. Since I was living and working in the city now, the most I could get there was once or twice a week. Louis and I were gearing up for a resort collection and were working round the clock.
My mother still wouldn’t meet Stephan. So Stephan took matters into his own hands and did something I’ll never forget. He made an audiotape message:
Queenie, I’m Stephan. I love your daughter. I’m sorry we’ve never met and that things have been like this. If I ever hurt you in any way, I apologize. Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of Donna and Gabby. They mean the world to me. I love them.
Even in her illness, my mother didn’t soften; she refused to listen to the tape.
At one point, Gail had to go on a four-day business trip to Puerto Rico with Hank, and we decided to transfer Queenie to Mount Sinai in Manhattan so I could take over the visits. Stephan was with us when the ambulance arrived, and said hi to my mother while she was sedated. He knew this was the only way he would get to meet her.
I visited Queenie every day that Gail wasn’t able to. My mother was failing quickly and would slip in and out of consciousness. I talked soothingly to her, told her stories about Gabby, and described the resort collection I was working on—all the things I knew she cared about.
The morning Gail returned from Puerto Rico, she came straight to the hospital, and Queenie got upset because she was tan. How dare she go on vacation while her mother was in the hospital! Gail headed for the door. I begged her to stay, but she wouldn’t. I had a powerful feeling that my mother was going to die that day. Our resort shows were that afternoon, so I couldn’t stay, either. We were doing two shows, back to back, because we had to split the audience in our small showroom.
“Mommy, don’t go anywhere,” I begged. “I have a show to put on, and I’ll be right back. I mean it—don’t go anywhere!”
She listened. When I returned, I sat with her as she drifted in and out. I wanted her to leave with a clear conscience, so I approached the big “secret” as gently as I could.
“Mommy, I know that you were married before my father,” I whispered. “Don’t worry, I know everything, and it’s all okay.” She may have nodded; I’m not sure. She died soon after that, with me at her side.
I pulled out all the stops for Queenie’s service at Riverside Memorial. Uncle Burt did the flowers, and he filled the room with white Casablanca lilies. I sent someone to our New Jersey warehouse to get a new black suit for my mother. I asked Rabbi Sobel, the man who had married Mark and me, to conduct the ceremony. At least three hundred people attended, including my friends, Gail’s friends, and our extended family.
True to my father, Gabby, till the end, my mother was buried beside him, along with the rest of the Faskes. Another death, another beginning. My mother died just as I was starting my life with Stephan.
Credit 9.1
Credit 9.2
10
ACT TWO
Everyone loved Stephan. He was handsome and charming, but more than that, he was sensitive and kind. My teenage nephews Glen and Darin adored Mark, so they didn’t want to like Stephan. But the day I took him to Gail’s house, he asked them to walk with him to go buy cigarettes, and the boys came home with a look of hero worship on their faces. People couldn’t resist him. It wasn’t just me.
In 1978, we had thrown Louis a surprise thirtieth-birthday party at Studio 54, and it was the first time many of my friends met Stephan. It was as if I’d walked in with Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger. Everyone was smitten, especially my gay friends, who threw me over the minute they met him. That’s the thing about handsome men: without even trying, they get all the attention. Sometimes Stephan’s attractiveness caused problems. Women openly flirted with him. Some would tell me that they “knew” Stephan. I’d shrug and smile politely, but the minute we were alone, I’d hiss, “Want to explain that one?” It was hard not to be jealous.
Our relationship was hot—in the sexy, passionate sense, yes, but in the volatile sense, too. Where Mark had been my supportive best friend who never argued, Stephan stood up to me. He loved me and was completely committed, but he didn’t tolerate my bullshit. I was a strong woman and wouldn’t back down. So we fought. Like crazy.
We had huge conflicts about whose work was more important. We fought about Gabby. He thought I spoiled her rotten (true) and wanted to instill more discipline, much as he did with his own kids. I was such a guilty Jewish mother that I defended my right to overindulge. I still traveled weeks at a time for work, and that was another issue. Stephan would say I was allowed to be gone for three weeks. If I was one day late, my ass was grass. I’d call and say “Hi, honey, it’s your wife.” And he’d answer, “What wife? If I had a wife, she’d be here.”
Our biggest source of tension, however, was money. More specifically, what was our money versus what was my money. Stephan had two children to support. By this time, I was making a healthy income, but it didn’t seem right that I should support his family. I wanted to empower him to provide for them, not emasculate him. Stephan was forced to take all sorts of jobs to make ends meet. He worked at his father’s business, but he also sold Jacuzzis and high-end showers and for a time made Lucite furniture. He squeezed in his art on the weekends. If I have one regret in life, it’s that I didn’t financially support him more back then. He should have had the time and energy to pour into his art. But you get an idea in your head and dig in your heels. It was stupid of me, I see that now.
