by Donna Karan
Still stunned, the woman nodded, and warmed up a bit as we walked around.
When we got back to our house, I got a call from Lisa, Stephan’s daughter. I could hear the outrage in her voice. “Donna, what did you just do?” It turned out that the husband of the woman next door worked on Wall Street with Lisa’s husband and told the whole floor how Donna Karan and Barbra Streisand had just invited themselves over for a house tour.
Next, we visited neighbors down the beach from us. A whole family was home, and the mother had her hair in rollers. This time, Barbra spoke. “Hi, I’m Barbra, and this is my friend Donna, who lives down the road. We’re curious about homes in the neighborhood and would love to see yours. Would you mind?”
Eventually the first house we saw went up for sale, and Stephan bought it for me. Not us, me. He was tired of people coming into our home, chanting, and stepping over him—or, worse, me hosting weekend sanctuaries and kicking him out. I told Stephan I wanted a Balinese-inspired space with a yoga studio, a massage area, and huge, open rooms with little separation between indoors and out. I repeated over and over that the floors between the deck and living room had to be flush for a seamless transition. “I got it, I got it,” he kept saying. But someone measured wrong, and all the custom doors came in an inch or so too short. To this day, I bump my toe on the door saddles every time I walk from the living room onto the deck. And each time I do that I say hello to Stephan, who must be smiling from above.
—
One day a woman who worked in our sample room asked me a question: if I could meet anyone in the world, who would it be? “His Holiness the Dalai Lama, no question,” I told her. I’ve always revered his love, his kindness, and the beauty of his teachings, and I’ve joked that I was a Bu before I was a Jew. It turned out that she, too, was a devotee. The next day, she came in and said she’d found out that His Holiness would be in New York for a fundraising reception being held at a hotel, and I could buy an invitation to meet him. I jumped at the chance—not just for me, but for Stephan as well. We had just learned that Stephan was sick, and I desperately wanted him to receive a blessing. I also invited Jane Chung, who was a new mother and wanted a blessing for her son, Dylan.
Our tickets included a private meeting for us with him and his entourage. I was so intimidated, I couldn’t look up or speak. All I could do was cry. There is a photo of me in the Dalai Lama’s arms, and I am weeping. You might think, “But you’ve met countless heads of state, royalty, President Clinton!” But for me, meeting the Dalai Lama was ten times more overwhelming. His Holiness represents the sacred world of kindness and peace. I’ve since been privileged to have a handful of audiences with him, and I can still barely speak.
Even Stephan, who had resisted every spiritual path I explored, felt the powerful energy of being in the Dalai Lama’s presence. The photo I have of the two of them is one of my most cherished possessions.
—
I won’t say I found myself through all these journeys, because that may never happen, and anyway that isn’t the goal. I was learning to be with myself and explore my feelings. I was giving birth to the seeker within and realizing there was more than one path to self-enlightenment. In the summer of 1992, I lost my most trusted guide. I was taking one of my solitary morning beach walks when my cell phone rang. The name Rath appeared on the caller ID, but it wasn’t Dr. Rath. It was a woman, a family member—his wife? A daughter? A sister? I don’t remember. It was so jarring, because as stupid as this sounds, I thought of him as my Dr. Rath, not a man with a family of his own.
“Donna, I’m sorry to tell you Frederick died yesterday,” said the voice. “He’d been sick for a while. We wanted you to know as soon as possible.” She may have told me about the services or where to make a donation, and then I thanked the woman, who clearly had more calls to make, and hung up.
I looked at the water and inhaled and exhaled deeply. My father, Anne Klein, now Dr. Rath…with a snap of the fingers, someone is gone. I hadn’t seen Dr. Rath in a while; since moving to the city, I no longer saw him every week, and we took a break in the summer. But we’d built a powerful bond over my twenty-plus years of treatment. He was a father figure, a confidant, and a dumping ground for all my personal relationships. I met him when I was Donna Faske, right before my marriage to Mark. He came to every show he could, and his stately gray hair, beard, tweeds, and pipe were a comforting presence in the crowd. People would often ask who he was, since he clearly wasn’t part of the fashion scene. He would say he was my friend.
Now I was forced to continue the journey without him.
Credit 18.1
19
LOSING CONTROL
Where I loved nature’s calm side—its beaches, snow, sunrises, sunsets—Stephan loved its chaos. He adored the lightning, the roar, and the unpredictability of thunderstorms. He even enjoyed flying in turbulent air. For these reasons, we nicknamed him “Storm.”
Stephan loved racing because it was all about riding into the crazy wind. This passion went way back. In his early twenties, a long-haired Stephan drove a 1957 convertible, which he complained was “all show, no go.” Then he got a racer, a 1950s Allard (a British roadster), and modified the body and the engine for racing by adding a roll bar, oversized cylinders, milled heads, and a blower (supercharger). Stephan raced the Allard at the Westhampton Dragway in Long Island, as well as the racetrack in Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut. At one point, he had a BSA motorcycle with “ape-hanger” handlebars (picture Easy Rider). My husband loved speed almost as much as he loved storms.
Stephan’s fifty-sixth birthday was approaching, and for gift ideas I called our friend Jann Wenner, the co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone. “I have to make it really good, Jann, because Stephan’s not talking to me,” I said. This wasn’t unusual; Stephan was often not talking to me because of something or other I’d done.
“If you want to blow his mind,” Jann said, “I know the perfect gift: a Ducati. That’s his dream bike.” Jann and Stephan shared a love of motorcycles. With Jann’s help, I bought a fire-engine-red one and had it delivered to our beach house.
“Are you kidding me?” Stephan shouted when he saw it. “Oh my God, Donna!” He was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to race it. It was more for me to worry about, but at least he was speaking to me again.
This was 1995, right around the time Stephan’s cancer was discovered. He had a spot on his lung that had to be removed in what’s called a sectionectomy. He made it seem simple and straightforward, like it was an average doctor’s visit, no big deal. I was like a child with Stephan—he let me think everything was okay, that he had it under control. I believed that if anyone had the strength and power to control something, even cancer, it was him. Jane Chung, my DKNY daughter-in-design, was getting married, so we put off the surgery by a day to attend her wedding.
“I’m confident we got it all,” the surgeon reported to me, the kids, and Patti and Harvey, who were with us in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital. He told us that it had been a non-small-cell tumor and assured us there was no need for follow-up treatment. We cheered and high-fived one another. I was so relieved. My husband and I could get back to life and work. We didn’t have time for a drawn-out illness. We had other problems to tackle.
—
Two years earlier, in 1993, Tomio and Frank had requested that we have lunch together at the Four Seasons Hotel. Our monthly partner meetings, usually held in my apartment, were stressful and antagonistic. Maybe a restaurant would set a different tone, I hoped.
“We are bleeding money and need to take action,” one of them began.
It’s going to be about selling the beauty company again, I thought.
“We can raise money in one of three ways,” Tomio said. “We can take on another partner who can invest in the company, but I’m sure you don’t want that any more than we do.”
I shook my head. “Another partner is the last thing we need.”
Tomio conti
nued, “We can raise our debt by issuing corporate bonds, which has its own problems, including a very high interest rate.”
“Or we can take the company public,” Frank declared, as if it was all decided. “That would be the best course for all.” He didn’t say it, but it was obvious he wanted out, and going public would be a smooth and profitable way to break the partnership. Like Stephan, Frank was weary of the infighting.
Stephan nodded in that cool, confident way of his and said, “I’ve been talking to Bear Stearns myself to explore our options.” Finally, it appeared, they agreed on something.
But I didn’t. I felt like a child, stomping my foot. “No, no, no. We’re not ready,” I said. “This is way too premature.” But no one was listening to me.
After a false start that year (we withdrew due to poor market conditions), we renewed our public offering in 1996 with Morgan Stanley leading the charge. I desperately wanted to maintain control over the company, and I learned that the way to do it was by getting super voting shares, which would give Stephan and me, the original owners, superior voting ability even as minority shareholders. But our bank said no. So instead of voting control, Stephan negotiated that we would receive royalties from the company for the continued use of my name. When we first opened the Donna Karan Company, we had created Gabrielle Studio, a separate entity, to protect my name, and when DKNY was founded and trademarked, we added that to Gabrielle Studio as well. From a business perspective, this was a very savvy move, as it gave us control over our labels, the most valuable part of our business. You couldn’t have a Donna Karan New York or DKNY product unless it bore the name, which we owned, regardless of the IPO.
I learned in 1996 that an IPO involved a “road show,” which was a traveling sales tour to introduce our company and product. We would be spending three weeks on the road—two weeks in the United States, one in Europe, twenty cities in all. I hadn’t ever heard of such a thing, and besides, what did I know about talking to investors? So I did it my way: I took my Seven Easy Pieces and demonstrated the founding principles of our company, literally. We had a black velvet coat stand with my seven pieces hanging on it, and using myself as a model, I’d show how the system worked. I had practiced this demonstration on my personal trainer beforehand, and even he got it. I’d start with the bodysuit and hosiery, add a pant, then toss on a jacket. Or I’d try a skirt and a coat. Or I’d switch in an evening element for a nighttime look. The investors were captivated—in Paris, they even applauded. It was pure theater, and it was crazy. At one point during our travels, I got something stuck in my eye and had to wear an eye patch for a while, but I carried on with the demonstrations nonetheless.
Stephan didn’t come with us, but he called constantly, yelling at me from afar. “Donna, stop being Donna. This is serious. We need you to be on point.” Someone must have called him about my antics, like the time I sat alone on one of our planes and wouldn’t open the doors, swearing I had had it and was going to take off without the rest of the group. I can be bratty when I’m tired or pushed to my limit, and this tour was driving me nuts. But I also had a huge revelation on that trip, which was that my system of dressing really worked! Here I was, traveling around the world, having to look polished and pulled together each and every day. And I pulled it off with just my seven or so easy pieces. I was a walking, breathing advertisement for my clothes.
On May 6, 1996, almost two months before we officially went public, New York magazine published a cover story entitled “Donna Karan: Corporate Goddess.” In the picture, I looked like I was praying. The inside title was “Donna Karan Sells Her Soul,” and the subhead read, “As her company is offered to the public by Wall Street for a second time, the New Yorkiest designer peddles spirituality as the essence of Karanism.” The article claimed that many fashion critics thought my fall 1995 collection was dreary and peculiar, and worried that I was getting “weirder” just as our company was set to go public. People around me took huge offense, but I loved the cover. I thought I looked great, and I was proud to put my spirituality out there. I was owning my truth.
Also, that particular fall collection, which I called Modern Souls, remains one of my very favorites. Yes, it was mostly black, but it was as classic and sexy as it gets, featuring long ribbed cashmere tank dresses; simple, chic tailoring; and sequined evening pieces. I knew the real reason for the less-than-glowing reviews: the shoes. I’m not kidding. I had shown all flats—big mistake. If I pair something with a high heel, the press is happy. Flats, I’m in trouble.
I’d deliberate for hours over the shoes. After Dr. Rath died, I was seeing a therapist and healer named Anna Ivara. I would go into Anna’s office with a tote bag full of shoes and muse about what kind of collection I wanted to do. Was I feeling more for a boot? A sandal? Or should I sex it up with a high heel? “You think this is easy?” I’d ask her. To me, shoes are the soul of a collection.
There I go again—anytime you use the words soul or spiritual, you get labeled a woo-woo. I was using those words a lot in those days (still do), and I didn’t understand other people’s resistance. Spirituality is life. Most people brush their teeth every day, and we can talk about that. And many if not most people pray every day, too, so why not talk about that?
But the marketplace is uneasy with a professional in search of spirituality, so I had to zip it up, however unnatural that felt. The irony was that I needed faith more than anything at that moment. Still, once a yogi, always a yogi. I am flexible and can do any pose asked of me—including breathing and standing still in the face of adversity.
The big day finally arrived: June 28, 1996. It was a Friday, which made sense—all my fashion shows were held on Fridays. I was excited, as it was the first time I’d ever been on Wall Street. A black-and-white Donna Karan flag hung outside the New York Stock Exchange to welcome us. Stephan, Frank, Tomio, Steve, our kids, my sister, and I all crowded onto the balcony of the exchange and took in the energy of the trading floor. I was scared I wasn’t going to ring the bell correctly, but I did, at exactly 9:29:59 that morning. The sound reverberated in the room, igniting a frenzy. I bought the first hundred shares of Donna Karan International at $24 a share. We were off and running.
To celebrate, we rented a fabulous yacht and turned it into a floating party with our families, executives, and bankers—somewhere between fifty and seventy-five people. The champagne flowed, and we toasted ourselves, our future, and New York City.
That’s the last good memory I have about going public.
Life had forever changed. The company was no longer my baby; it belonged to everyone else. Every quarter, we had phone calls with analysts and the financial press, in which we had to explain every bump and difficulty. Once a year we’d hold a shareholder meeting, where people all but threw rotten tomatoes at us. To make matters worse, everyone was angry about the money we were earning through Gabrielle Studio and the use of my name. My family and friends had all bought the stock and were watching its value slip while I was receiving royalty checks. Even Barbra was pissed at me, as she, too, had invested. Stephan and I had never felt so alone. We were living in a nightmare with no place to turn.
My biggest heartache of all was that my creative freedom had been stunted. From our very first seven easy pieces, our success was born out of following our gut, not following a strategy. I wanted to design menswear? I tried it out and put it on the runway. My friends were having babies? We created a kids’ collection. Jane had an idea for DKNY? We ran with it. Creatively, we were very spontaneous, and that gave us the space to see what worked and what didn’t. That’s how we innovated. When you’re playing with your own money, you can take chances. When you have shareholders, no one wants you off message.
In 1997, with a new corporate structure in place, we licensed DKNY Jeans, Active, and Juniors to Liz Claiborne. Next we sold the beauty business. Puig and Estée Lauder were vying to be our exclusive global licensee, and Estée Lauder made the offer we couldn’t refuse. Transferring our beauty d
ivision to other hands was a hard one for Stephan, but we knew we were too young, too small, and too inexperienced to keep going. Being public didn’t give us the time we needed to grow up properly. Estée Lauder understood the business better than anyone, and I knew we’d made the right decision, but we were giving our baby up for adoption, and that hurt.
Through all the turmoil of being a publicly held company, our design team was on a roll. Peter Speliopoulos had joined us as Collection’s fashion director in 1993. A perfectionist, he had become my right arm, keeping the room and my design vision going. He loved classicism and artistry as much as I did when it came to fabrics and embellishments. Collection was getting fabulous reviews, and our advertising was hot and sexy: Demi Moore and Bruce Willis starred in our much-buzzed-about 1996 fall campaign. It featured one of my most treasured icons: the handcrafted velvet dévoré dress. That dress was a pure artistic expression and a joyful relief from all the negativity. It was a moment where I could revel in doing what I love best: creating.
I had another such moment in late 1996. We were invited to participate in the first Biennale di Firenze, a three-month exhibition fusing fashion and art that took place in nineteen museums across Florence. It was an amazing honor, as I was the only American included. Ingrid Sischy, the writer and longtime editor of Interview magazine, who became one of my closest friends, was one of the three curators. The exhibit would be called “Time and Fashion.” Fashion designers were asked to collaborate with artists: Miuccia Prada with Damien Hirst, Helmut Lang with Jenny Holzer, Gianni Versace with Roy Lichtenstein, Jil Sander with Mario Merz, and Rei Kawakubo with Oliver Herring. I was given a historic charitable site, the Museo del Bigallo, across from the Duomo.
I worried I couldn’t pull off an appropriate connection, but the minute I saw the Madonna and Child at the altar, I wanted to create angels floating from above, dressed in clothes that transcended the moment. My final statement was a trio of beautiful dévoré gowns, softly lit from the stained glass windows. Suspended from the vaulted ceiling, they cascaded down to fuse with the raw stones the chapel was built from. Even Stephan, who never felt fashion quite rose to the level of art, was impressed. That meant the world to me.
