My Journey
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“But we’re right by the road!”
“I only see cows here, Donna,” Ruth said, wading into the water. “Besides, you’re a designer. You’re around naked women all the time.” She had a point. In I went.
We repeated this cleansing ritual again and again. Ruth found all sorts of places for us to physically immerse ourselves in Judaism—maybe fifteen in that one week. We visited ancient burial sites, including the graves of those who wrote the Zohar. I became addicted to mikvahs and was constantly asking Ruth where our next one was.
I still Skype with Ruth every week, mostly Thursdays, and every week is a lesson on my journey. I spent a lifetime not having a faith, and now I’m just so grateful to have somewhere to turn for guidance. Ruth, like Stephan, calls me out on my nonsense. She never lets me play the victim or blame someone else for my unhappiness. Instead, she reminds me that I possess the gift of life and light—that we all do—and that the more light I give out, the more I receive. It’s the simplest and yet the most empowering knowledge I’ve ever received.
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CONNECTING THE DOTS
I’ve always believed that if there’s a problem, there must be a solution. You just have to get creative. That’s how I approach designing and just about everything else in my life. When AIDS was literally killing our industry, I came up with a way to marry philanthropy and commerce in the form of Seventh on Sale. In the same spirit, I was thrilled to collaborate on Kids for Kids, for pediatric AIDS, and then again to create Super Saturday, in support of a cure for ovarian cancer. I’ve also contributed to countless charities, ready to jump in whenever asked. My instinct is to be proactive. I want to do something, fix it, get involved in a way that will bring others together and make a difference. I had been on a path of helping others this way for years; I just didn’t know where it was leading me.
Then, right after we went public in 1996, I had a vision—a term I rarely use outside of design. It was quite specific. I saw three connecting buildings: one a gallery; one a retail store, spa, and café; and the third a condo building with a restaurant on the street level. The vision was highly detailed and highly personal. I had spent a lifetime searching for calm at retreats and spas, on nature treks, even at self-help seminars. Why not bring that peace and energy to the city and live with it every day? I wanted to create a community of consciousness and change, and this vision was the answer. It would bring together all the tools people like me needed to cope with living in the chaos of the city. Everything would be integrated—the objectives, the activities, the commitment to solving problems. You could live in the condos or just be a member. The name said it all: Urban Zen. I imagined Urban Zens in major cities across the country—and eventually the world. I talked about it with Stephan, and even half joked that his studio would be a perfect space for the first center. He agreed Urban Zen was something I was born to create; he even put a clause into my LVMH contract that allowed me the creative freedom to do it.
When Stephan asked me to take care of the nurses, the desire to create my own health and caring initiative became especially heartfelt. Sickness had hit home. It was no longer something that happened to other people, it happened to me, my husband, my life. No one escapes illness, and no one is prepared for it, either. My Urban Zen concept could be a way to take care of the patient, the caregivers, and the medical community, starting with the nurses.
Having a concept is one thing, but turning it into reality is another. Two experiences drove me to act, each brought to me by a friend.
In 2005, Barbra called. “We must get tickets to President Clinton’s Global Initiative,” she said. “It’s happening in September at the Sheraton in New York.” The former president was gathering the most powerful, highest-profile people he knew and holding workshops to discuss crucial global issues and actionable solutions. I was bowled over. What a brilliant way to solve problems! At that first conference, I wanted to clone myself so I wouldn’t miss any of the panel discussions. I met and saw extraordinary people: the king and queen of Jordan, Bono, Tony Blair, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Condoleezza Rice, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Branson, and Laura Bush. It was a nonpolitical event, just a call to action for the greater good.
I was so inspired. I thought this should happen more than once a year; it should be a way of life! That was the first dot leading to Urban Zen.
A year later, my friend Sonja Nuttall, whom I’d met the summer after Stephan died, drew the second dot. “Would you be interested in doing a fundraiser at Stephan’s studio for His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and Norbulingka Institute?” she asked. Sonja worked with the institute, which was dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan history and culture.
“Are you kidding?” I shrieked. “Of course I’d be interested! How soon can we do it?”
Sonja and I organized the fundraiser HOPE. The Dalai Lama wasn’t available until the day after we’d planned, so Rodney and Colleen offered to teach yoga instead. The minute I walked into the studio and saw all the mats laid out among beautiful Urban Zen banners, I thought, This is it. My calm in the chaos. Urban Zen was meant to be.
His Holiness came the next day, and we also hosted a private lunch that included my whole family, the Tibetan scholar Robert Thurman, Rodney and Colleen, and friends like Trudie Styler and Deb Jackman, the wife of Hugh Jackman. Of course, I hardly spoke to His Holiness. I simply couldn’t. His energy, his spirit, and his light just took my breath away. We raised over a million dollars, and the studio was blessed in every sense.
The HOPE event ignited something within me. It touched my heart in a visceral way. I could use my gift of creating and communicating to make a real difference in all the things I valued most—culture, health care, and education—and I drew up a business plan to create a center that would connect them. To me, the vision was so clear. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to others: everyone tried to talk me into focusing on just one initiative. But yoga was my model, and yoga represents the union of mind, body, and spirit as well as the past, present, and future. I could go on about this for days, but let me break my initiatives down the way I did my Seven Easy Pieces, since they, too, are interchangeable:
1. The preservation of culture (the past). The more I travel, especially to Africa and the East, the more I appreciate the wisdom and beauty of vanishing cultures. I love anything artisan: crafts, beading, vegetable dyes, and have worked to incorporate them into my designs whenever possible. When something is made by hand, you feel the soul that went into it, and the generations that passed down their skills. But globalization threatens to turn us into one homogenous people. If we don’t raise awareness now, we will lose individual cultures. We need to keep these traditions alive, and integrate them into modern life, as they have so much to teach us.
2. Integrative health care (the present). This came out of my experience with Stephan. When he was sick, I couldn’t make him better, but I had the tools to make him feel better, including Reiki, yoga, acupuncture, meditation, breath work, and massage therapy—all ancient practices, I might add. I saw what a big difference these integrative therapies made, which led me to ask, where is the “care” in health care? There is a void in the system. Everyone treats the disease, but what about the patient? I have two goals for health care: patient care and patient navigation (directing care in the age of specialists). Let’s treat the whole patient, mind, body, and spirit, and guide them through the maze of finding the best help in the first place. Even President Clinton, who got healthy through a vegan diet, has created a separate Health Access Initiative to take on this issue.
3. Empowering children through education (the future). I was so inspired by Kabbalah’s Spirituality for Kids, which was founded by Madonna. In Israel, the organization is called Kids Creating Peace, and it brings Israeli and Palestinian children together. How smart and strategic. Change starts on the educational level. You can’t preserve culture without creating awareness. You can’t improve health care without teaching people what steps to tak
e. You can’t build for a peaceful future without bringing kids together. It’s so simple it’s stupid. Let’s bring this mind-set into schools and prepare kids to do better by teaching them the mind, body, and spirit connection, starting with yoga and meditation.
These initiatives weren’t about me. They were born of a need to reach out, to give back. I achieved so much at a young age and often wondered what my higher purpose was. Every time I’d get a woman into the dressing room, she’d tell me her problems. And all our issues are the same: we love our families, we want to keep them and ourselves healthy, and we want a better future for our children. I may not have the answers, but I have the platform and the profile to connect, communicate, and create change.
In 2007, we hosted our first full-scale Urban Zen event: a Well-Being Forum spread over ten days with a hundred speakers and more than two hundred attendees a day. I hired Rachel Goldstein, a close friend of Gabby’s, as program director, and Richard Baskin flew in to help produce it. Our co-chairs included my doctors Woody Merrell and Frank Lipman, Rodney and Colleen, and model/maternal health advocate Christy Turlington Burns. The experience was a true East-meets-West look at health care.
The list of the speakers says it all: doctors like Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Larry Norton, Mehmet Oz, Dean Ornish, Christiane Northrup, and Deepak Chopra; advocates such as Michael J. Fox, Karen Duffy, and Kathy Freston; scholars like Robert Thurman and Reverend Eric Schneider; spiritualists like Buddhist master Joan Halifax, my Kabbalah teacher Ruth Rosenberg, and Zen master Roshi Pat O’Hara; communicators like Arianna Huffington and Ingrid Sischy; and yogis like Richard Freeman, Gary Kraftsow, and James Murphy, as well as Sharon and David. We also had influencers like Tony Robbins, Marianne Williamson, and Eve Ensler and icons like Lou Reed and Diane von Furstenberg. Patients like Kris Carr, the wellness activist and cancer survivor who made the amazing film Crazy Sexy Cancer, took part, as did my dear friends Christina Ong and the retailer Joyce Ma.
I was in my glory. Every day started and ended with a yoga practice. We served nutritious lunches. On the last night of the forum, my spiritual sister, the performing artist Gabrielle Roth, who until her death in 2012 practiced healing and awakening through dance, gave a magical performance and led a group celebration. “This is incredible, Donna,” Lynn Kohlman told me on that last day. “Look at all these people. We’re really making a difference.” Lynn had spoken on a panel and attended as much of the Forum as possible. She was physically weak, her speech was slurred, and she often got confused. But she was engaged—and remained so until her death in 2008, a full six years after her diagnosis of brain cancer. She had the essential tools—a great yoga practice and compassionate caretaking.
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Of course, I couldn’t just do a forum. I wear layers, and I think and act in layers, too. Though I had done pop-up stores in the Hamptons, I decided to open a permanent Urban Zen store to coincide with the conference. I called on Kevin Salyers, the Madison Avenue store director, to help set it up. I’d bought the townhouse next door to Stephan’s studio, which happened to have a small storefront. We sourced from the many cultural objects in our warehouse and ordered in Young Living essential oils, my personal favorites, which were being used extensively throughout the forum. We sold the Como Shambhala products I knew and loved as well as wellness books, DVDs, and audio recordings.
Naturally, I had to offer clothes, too. I hired the designer Mark Kroeker to work with me to create the kind of pieces I’ve always wanted: high-end styles that transcended fashion and were all about comfort. We designed a capsule collection of easy tops, palazzo pants, a jumpsuit, a few cashmere pieces, and some scarves. There was no retail strategy behind them, only the desire to make clothes I personally wanted. It was incredibly freeing to design for myself again and not have to cater to an established customer’s expectations or the industry’s rigid schedule.
The Urban Zen store was a marriage of commerce and philanthropy, not unlike Seventh on Sale and Super Saturday. But in this case, we were selling soulful, global handcrafted products to support the Urban Zen Foundation. For example, everyone loved the Balinese furniture I designed, and now I could sell it here. Ditto for the many artisan pieces I wore and adored. We had done this kind of thing at 819 Madison Avenue, but we had space limitations. Now we had a whole store to play with. (In 2008, we expanded further with a store in Sag Harbor, and eventually we’d open pop-up stores in places like LA and Aspen.)
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Our forum was an amazing success, and Rodney came up with a perfect way to keep it going. “Let’s train yoga teachers right here in the studio,” he said. “They understand the mind-body-spirit connection better than anyone.” So we co-founded our Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) program, where we train and certify UZIT practitioners in yoga therapy, aromatherapy, Reiki, therapeutic massage, meditation, nutrition, and palliative care. They would treat what we called PANIC: pain, anxiety, nausea, insomnia, and constipation—the very real inconveniences of being sick. So much of this was inspired by my personal healer, Ruth Pontvianne, and all the ways she cared for Stephan when he was ill.
I’m proud to say our UZIT program is thriving. We had a hundred graduates the first year, and to date have certified more than seven hundred at varying levels. As managed by one of our first UZIT practitioners, Gillian Cilibrasi, we train in partnerships with established health institutions across the country. Dr. Woody Merrell collaborated with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, where we studied the effects of our program for a year and calculated that it resulted in a savings of $900,099 on just one floor. We’ve gone on to partner with health care facilities ranging from the UCLA Health System to the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge. Our classes at various yoga conferences around the world are always packed.
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Our clothing line, which I now design with Bessie Afnaim and Oliver Corral, is thriving, too. Everything we do is as simple and luxurious as a T-shirt. And like a T-shirt, every item is seasonless and ageless—ready to cross climates and time zones. If I can’t travel, work, do yoga, and sleep in something, I don’t want to know from it. We’re known for our jersey and cashmere-and-silk tube dresses, tunics, leggings, luxe knits, and leather and suede jackets. Layer them as you wish. Add a handmade Haitian artisan necklace, a handwoven scarf by Celine Cannon (an artist who worked with Stephan), or maybe a hand-tooled belt by leather artisan Jason Ross. We also make our own jewelry and accessories. Everything is handcrafted and highly individual. And I have finally achieved my lifelong quest to show and sell in the same season! Miraculous, right?
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My love affair with Haiti began right around the time Urban Zen was expanding beyond New York City. In early January 2010, I was consumed by a family crisis. Gianpaolo’s father Guido was sick, and we were in the hospital with him around the clock. When I returned to work, Michelle Jean, the Haitian manager of the Urban Zen center at the time, was beside herself. “Haven’t you heard about Haiti’s earthquake?” she asked, obviously distraught.
I truly hadn’t, as we hadn’t been reading the news. I quickly learned that the earthquake, which occurred on January 12, had measured 7.0 on the Richter scale and killed more than 230,000 people, injuring another 300,000. Just as troubling, 1.5 million people had been displaced. “We have to do something,” Michelle kept saying, and I thoroughly agreed.
But what? I wasn’t going to write a check—that’s not how I help. I prefer to take action. Sonja and I started to call around. We found out that many aid groups were heading down there, and I offered my plane. We also gathered yoga blankets, oils, and other supplies to help the international doctors and nurses who were exhausted from working around the clock. (They especially appreciated the aromatherapy, given all the death and decay.) But it was the displaced population that I was most worried about. Where do you begin to put 1.5 million homeless people?
My friend Lisa Fox went online and found a disaster-relief pop-up tent that could house ten people at a time.
It came in a box along with practical supplies such as cots, blankets, and dishes. Each tent cost $1,000, so we set out to raise money to buy a ton of them. We put one up in our Urban Zen store and mobilized to launch an event called Hope, Help & Relief Haiti, partnering with music executive Andre Harrell, the Mary J. Blige & Steve Stoute Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now, and André Balazs and his Standard Hotels. We also organized an initiative called Tent Today, Home Tomorrow specifically to raise money for the shelters.
So many people were reaching out to help that it became a matter of consolidating efforts. Various groups within the music, fashion, and entertainment industries joined us. Mary J. Blige and Wyclef Jean performed, and we raised over $1 million. (I also had a funny karmic moment. That night Wyclef handed me a check for thousands of dollars. “Is this for the tents?” I asked, confused. “No, it’s for you. I owe you,” he said, and explained that many years ago he had worked in the shipping department in our New Jersey warehouse. One night he’d fallen asleep and there was a robbery. He’d always felt responsible and had sworn he’d pay me back for the missing merchandise. I was happy to buy more tents with the money.)
While I had never been to Haiti, I had an idea for it based on what I had seen my friend John Hardy, the jewelry designer, do in Bali. John had tapped into the miracle of indigenous bamboo—a plant with the strength of concrete—and was building villages. Bali was a perfect model of people relying on natural resources and artisan traditions to create a sustainable economy—a thought that had struck me on my very first trip there. What do they grow in Haiti? I wondered. Someone mentioned the aromatic plant vetiver, and I thought, Aha—perfume! We could ask designers to each create a fragrance and a bottle. Ideas started percolating in my head.
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I soon found out that the Clinton Global Initiative was knee-deep in all things Haiti, and I also met a woman named Joey Adler, whose organization, OneXOne, was working to build a manufacturing factory there. We organized a trip in late 2010 and brought along Sonja Nuttall and my Urban Zen right arm and chief of staff, Marni Lewis. (For my next trip, we brought photographer Russell James, John Hardy, and our Urban Zen jewelry designer Isabel Encinias.)