by Donna Karan
Gabby had recently graduated from New York University and started assisting Bonnie on her trips. They went to Asia, West Africa, the North Pole, and Papua New Guinea. All this inspirational traveling was paying off. Every time they returned, the design elements they found would work their way into the clothes by way of colors, textures, shapes, or embroideries. Not in a literal sense, mind you. I don’t like costumes. I design modern clothes for modern lifestyles. To me, inspiration is the inhale: you breathe in the beauty, the richness, the culture. And the clothes are the exhale: the real-life translation into pieces you can wear to work or walking down city streets. In most cases, you would never have a clue what inspired me. It could be anything from colors found in a Moroccan spice market to a handwoven Balinese basket to a particular stitch on a vintage jacket found at a Paris flea market.
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Bonnie’s presentations only intensified my own desire to travel, so I called Christina Ong, my London and Asian retail partner, for ideas. Christina lives in Singapore and travels the world. She and her husband, Beng Seng, whom everyone calls “BS,” had been helping Bonnie and Gabby on their trips. Without missing a beat, she told me I must see Bali. “I’ll take care of everything,” she assured me.
I had very romantic notions about Bali and kept humming “Bali Hai” from the musical South Pacific as Stephan and I packed. After the twenty-four-hour journey, we arrived at the beautiful airport in Denpasar, Bali’s capital. We had no sooner left the airport when we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic, with billboards and storefronts everywhere you looked. It was Bali LA, not the Bali Hai from my childhood dreams. I was so disappointed.
I called Christina. “I had this whole other vision of Bali—one of natural, unspoiled land,” I said. “Does that not exist anymore?”
She got it immediately. “I’m sending you up to Ubud,” she said. “That’s the place for you, I promise.”
Stephan and I took the two-hour drive high into the hills of central Bali to the private villas of Christina’s friend Amir Rabik, which were part of his home. It was nighttime, so I couldn’t see anything. I went into the bathroom, where I discovered a tarantula on the floor and screamed. “Where’s my nature girl now?” Stephan kidded me. I could hardly sleep. But the next morning, when I looked around at the peaceful green hills and smelled the fresh, fragrant air, I knew I’d landed in paradise. That’s when my real journey began.
This was in 1997, and my connection with Bali was immediate and visceral. I felt like I had come home. I still fantasize about moving my family there and calling it a day. I could carry on about the lush peaks and rice paddies as far as the eye can see, but it’s the people who speak to my heart. They’re warm, wonderful, hospitable, and lovely. And, just as impressive, they preserve their culture through creativity and commerce in the most seamless way. Their land is part of their lifestyle and export businesses, from agriculture to artisan furnishings. The culture awakened something in me. I didn’t start Urban Zen until years later, but a tiny seed had been planted.
My connection to Bali was meant to be. The karma was everywhere: Bali’s license plates all begin with DK (I even saw a DKCK, which I photographed to show Calvin). The clincher for Stephan was that Bali is motorcycle heaven, as bikes are the primary means of getting around on the island. “Tell me we aren’t meant to live here permanently,” I said to him as we rode past rice paddies on a borrowed bike one afternoon. He was just as smitten as I was.
Christina and BS soon joined us and insisted that we see the Begawan Giri Estate, which overlooks the Ayung River. A man named Bradley Gardner had created this luxurious hotel on a hill, with five houses inspired by the elements: air, water, earth, wind, and fire. When I saw it, I felt once again like my soul had come home. It was pure nirvana. We walked down the 140 steps to the river, passing many ponds along the way. At one point I found myself floating in a pond, enveloped in endless greenery, and a remarkable calm came over me. I’d never experienced anything like it before. I felt as if I was being held and caressed by God—it was that spiritual a moment. I was so at peace I couldn’t get out of the water.
While we were there, we found out Begawan Giri was for sale. I wanted to invest, but Stephan put the kibosh on that immediately. Fortunately, Christina and BS bought the place themselves. Today, the estate is a wellness resort called Como Shambhala, and it’s my absolute favorite place in the world. I try to go there every year or two.
Since that trip, Christina has become one of my closest friends. We couldn’t be more different: she’s soft-spoken and reserved (words never used to describe me, that’s for sure). But we’re both Libras, so my theory is that we balance each other: East meets West, yin and yang. Like me, Christina is a creative businesswoman who loves her family more than anything. She also has a passion for artisan culture that takes her to every corner of the world. She’s had a profound influence on my life. Not only did she introduce me to Bali, but she introduced me to Parrot Cay, as well as to my yoga teacher, Rodney Yee.
Quiet as Christina is, my outgoing personality doesn’t faze her at all, and I’ll tell you why: her husband, BS, is a bat out of hell. A global entrepreneur and utter genius, he never stops for a minute. In him, I have met my ADD match. Honestly, he makes me look relaxed and focused. I have been on planes with BS where he changes his mind about which country to land in. Stephan adored BS, and the group of us—Christina, BS, me, Stephan, Bonnie, and Gabby—started to travel together in various combinations.
BS took us to Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, the Philippines, Burma, and Bhutan. BS is such a crazy traveler, he’d have us visit North Vietnam in the morning and South Vietnam in the afternoon. His tours were impressionistic and passionate; he wasted no time, knowing just what to do in each and every place. With each stop, I fell deeper and deeper in love with the East and its serene spirituality, aesthetic sensibility, and artisan craftsmanship. It spoke to me on a very deep level.
Bonnie calls BS a one-man travel boot camp. Every morning he gave us an itinerary. Here first, there next, and then over there. Once Bonnie, Gabby, and I planned a trip to Bhutan with BS, and here’s how it unfolded: the girls and I flew from New York to London and then to Delhi, India, where we stopped to do some furniture shopping, then on to Nepal, where we met BS and Christina. We were in Nepal for what felt like just minutes, though we managed to buy some fabric and silver for inspiration. Then we were off to Bhutan, the most beautiful country imaginable. The next morning, we climbed an hour up a hill to see these amazing prayer flags. As soon as we reached the top and looked at them, BS said, “Okay, time’s up. Gotta go. Plane’s waiting.” I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
Then we flew back to Milan, Italy, where we caught up with Bonnie and Gabby’s new boyfriends at the time, Luca and Gianpaolo. We spent the night doing a fashion show for them at the Hotel Principe di Savoia with all the dusty, musty ethnic pieces we’d picked up in various village markets, and they thought we were crazy. This entire trip happened over a matter of days, not weeks. But Bonnie and I were good at cramming it in. We once went on a forty-eight-hour shopping spree in Istanbul because we had a weekend to kill between fabric meetings in Milan.
My first trip to India was with Bonnie and Gabby in November 1999. We arrived in Delhi, and once again I was disappointed. It looked like Miami or some other modern urban mecca. We went into a fabric store (one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever been—it was like Première Vision, the legendary semiannual fabric show in Paris, but all under one roof), and I groused to the owner that my first impression of India did not live up to the more romantic, cultural mecca of my mind. “Where is the magical India I’ve imagined my whole life?” I asked this chic-looking Indian man.
“You need to go to Varanasi,” he said matter-of-factly. “Go there, and I’ll meet you.” His name was Babba, and we didn’t know him from Adam, but that didn’t stop me.
“Let’s go now!” I said enthusiastically before Gabby or Bonnie could object.
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bsp; Varanasi, an ancient living city on the banks of the Ganges, was surreal in every way, and it far, far, far surpassed my imagined ideal of India. It is a spiritual destination for Hindus, who flock there in great numbers because they believe that bathing in the polluted waters of the river will absolve them of their sins. It’s also a place to die. More than two hundred bodies are burned daily in cremation ceremonies, which I found fascinating—and a bit macabre. (I called Patti in New York to describe what I was seeing, and she said she was getting sick just from hearing about it.) I couldn’t stop photographing everything I saw. Bonnie snapped a picture of me wearing all white and talking to a white cow. That night, Babba treated us to the most magical evening I’ve ever experienced on a trip. He took us by boat up the Ganges, which was lit with floating candles because of a festival going on. We arrived at a temple with roses strung from ceiling to floor and a lavish dinner set up just for us. Flutes played Indian music. I think there was even a snake charmer and a couple of men standing on their heads. You would have thought an Indian princess was getting married.
“You wanted authentic,” Babba said. We also wanted his fabric, and returned to his Delhi store and practically bought out the place. He was no fool, this businessman.
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Try as we might not to stand out when traveling, we always do. Especially when we’re loaded down with luggage. Once Bonnie and I had to dash to make a train in Tokyo. In Japan, everything is neat and orderly. There was this nice, single-file line for the train, and no one was carrying packages of any kind; women just held their little purses. Cut to me and Bonnie juggling five enormous suitcases, boxes, and God knows what else, with porters trying to help us. It took forever to explain to the conductor that, yes, we needed all of it with us in our seats. We later found out that everyone thought we were making a movie. But that’s the thing about traveling: you are on an adventure, but you still have to get your work done. Train and plane time is working time.
My passion for the East thoroughly transformed my design aesthetic. My clothes had always combined American and ethnic elements, but now they became more streamlined, with origami folds and other Asian accents. My mission was to infuse the ancient beauty of the East with the modernity of the West, and that’s where the name Urban Zen came from. For me, it’s as much a way of life as it is a design vision. At that moment, I had no idea just how far I would take it.
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Now that I was venturing outside of New York, I wanted the Donna Karan woman, my customer, to do the same. My design was still urban in spirit and function, but I wanted to show that, like me, this woman was on a journey of passion and inspiration. So for spring 1997, we shot the ever-amazing Iman in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation in Nevada. I wanted to convey a sense of artisan simplicity connected to the earth. The palette was tribal and tactile, the silhouette long, lean, and timeless. That collection was full of body-conscious jerseys that could fold up into nothing in a suitcase and be dressed up or down, the kind of easy, versatile clothes I personally needed more and more (not that they made my suitcases any slimmer).
On the other end of the spectrum, for fall 1999 we did dramatically sculpted and molded felted clothes with shapes that stood away from the body. Full skirts with nipped-in waists. Cocoon coats. Strapless dresses. The landscape in the ads needed to complement these strong silhouettes. Trey and Hans, our creative directors, were all set to photograph the clothes in the salt flats in Death Valley National Park in California. But as with our presidential ad campaign in 1992, inspiration struck me late at night. Just a few days before the scheduled shoot, I called Trey. “I’m feeling for frozen, not desert. You know, icebergs. I think it will make a lot more sense for these clothes. What can we do?”
Trey took a deep breath—starting with Stephan, that’s how the smart men in my life have always handled my big ideas—and said, “Let me get back to you.” And he did, with creativity and enthusiasm. Trey and Hans canceled the Death Valley shoot and took the clothes to Greenland instead. You’ve never seen such inspiring photos. The landscape was lunar and starkly beautiful—the perfect backdrop.
My fall 2000 collection was inspired by red Bhutanese monks’ robes, and the clothes were so sexy, so body-conscious—so un-monk-like—that we photographed the ads in Paris with Milla Jovovich, an actress and model I love, and the sexy, edgy British actor Gary Oldman. It was a sizzling campaign showing a hot couple driving in the rain, Milla in a soft red dress and Gary in a black jacket and open-collared white shirt. A year later, in one of my all-time favorite campaigns, the Donna Karan woman went to Vietnam for spring 2001, with Milla Jovovich looking sultry in chiffon bias slip dresses and Jeremy Irons in easy linen suits and cotton shirts.
The very next season, our woman went seductively native in a collection I called Urban Warrior, featuring earthen-colored raw-cut shearlings, handknit sweaters, and bias-cut body jerseys, all accented at the hip with Robert Lee Morris low-slung belts with antiqued brass hardware. For that campaign, we photographed the actress and model Amber Valletta in a tented camp in the Moroccan desert with, once again, Jeremy Irons (I had a huge crush on him). I was desperate to bring our woman to other parts of Africa, but it never happened, despite a fun-filled casting call in Cape Town—more on that later.
My imagination was soaring. I was living in the world now and constantly seeking my next adventure, but always bringing it home to New York City in a real and urban way.
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The only time I had trouble unplugging from my life was in the summer, because I knew the European fashion shows were right after Labor Day. This was frustrating, mostly because we Americans were always accused of copying what had just come down the Paris and Milan runways. (As if it were humanly possible to design and sew a copycat collection in a week!) So I was always a little anxious at this time of year. Then in 1999, Helmut Lang, an Austrian designer based in New York City, launched a movement to have the U.S. market show first, and got enough support to make the switch. Yes, it killed our summer vacations, especially August. We had less time to design, and even less time to get our fabrics delivered. But the great news was that I stopped worrying about what the French or Italians were doing. I now had permission to rent a boat with Barbra and not so much as open a newspaper. That was a vacation in and of itself.
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On the surface, all these trips were a form of escape. Helming a public company was one of the most challenging things I had ever done. I lived in fear of Stephan’s next scan, even though his cancer had been quiet for a few years. And Gabby was grown up and out of the house and didn’t need me in any real sense. But my travels were about so much more than escaping. With each new adventure, I was sinking deeper and deeper into myself. That’s what happens when you go to a place where no one knows you or your brand. You’re not performing for anyone but yourself, and you remember how to be a child with a sense of wonder and discovery. You experience awe in the most profound sense, and it’s the most addictive drug of all. I still had so much traveling ahead of me—multiple trips to Africa, Israel, the Middle East, Indonesia—and I’ve barely touched my bucket list, which includes Russia, China, Tibet, Cuba, South America, and the North and South Poles.
To this day, my favorite trip is the one I haven’t taken, and my favorite moment is the one when I arrive.
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21
CREATE, COLLABORATE, CHANGE
To explain my passion for philanthropy, I have to jump back to the mid-1980s. Nothing prepared any of us in the fashion industry for the AIDS crisis. All of a sudden young, vibrant men were getting horribly sick. You’d see a lesion, hear a cough, watch someone get skinny and old before your eyes, and within months, if not weeks, you’d be attending their funeral. Assistants, designers, executives, editors—everyone was impacted. It was terrifying, and we couldn’t ignore it. The majority of the country at that time considered it a “gay” problem, so help was slow on the national front. But to me,
fashion was the ultimate gay community. If we didn’t do something to raise consciousness and money, who would?
Every problem has a creative solution, and I had an idea. In 1986, I called a meeting with Perry Ellis, then president of the CFDA. I liked Perry. He was young, gracious, and lovely to deal with, and I admired his clothes and the fresh energy he brought to fashion. I knew he was going through a rough time—his partner, Laughlin Barker, had died in January of that year, and many speculated it was from AIDS. As I sat in Perry’s impressive wood-paneled office, I couldn’t help noticing the lesions on his face.
“Perry, are you okay?” I asked gently.
“I’m allergic to cucumbers,” he said, pointing to his face. “Can you believe it?”
I paused, then let it go. We were friends, but not close enough for me to press the point. Instead, I jumped into my idea.
“Perry, this AIDS epidemic is everywhere,” I said. “It’s literally killing our industry. We’ve got to do something as a community to show our support.” I started to talk faster because I could feel him shutting down. “I have this idea. Let’s open a shop. We all have so much stuff in our design rooms, so much extra stock. All the money can go to AIDS. We can start with a prototype in New York and open up several across the country.”
He looked at me without expression. “AIDS is a private issue, Donna,” he said. “I don’t think we should be putting it out there.” His clipped voice signaled that the discussion was over.
Perry died a couple of months later. Two weeks before, at his show on May 8, he had been too weak to walk the runway. His office would not confirm that his death was related to AIDS. He was forty-six years old.
