Donna has left the building...
News broke late this afternoon that Donna Karan is stepping down as
the chief designer of the brand she founded after 31 years at its helm.
According to LVMH, which bought Donna Karan International in 2001,
she’ll remain a close adviser.
For the time being, it will not begin a
search for a successor, and, in turn, the label’s fashion shows will be
put on temporary hiatus. Karan, for her part, plans to devote more time
to her Urban Zen company and foundation. Karan got her start at Anne Klein, where she rose from assistant
designer to head of design. She launched her own label in 1984 with her
husband, Stephan Weiss, and Takihyo, and quickly garnered acclaim for
her “Seven Easy Pieces” collection of mix-and-match jersey separates. It
was a practical, layerable, and, most of all, feminine system of
dressing, and it made an especially big impact because it came at a time
when women, new to the corporate workforce, were wearing masculine,
boxy power suits with exaggerated padded shoulders. Think Melanie
Griffith in Working Girl. Karan was a rare woman running her own label in that era, but she had
no shortage of success.
She launched DKNY, a lower-priced collection,
in 1988, and the company’s four-letter logo would dominate the corner of
Broadway and Houston for well over a decade. From the start, she
understood the power of marketing. In the ’90s, her famous friends Demi
Moore and Bruce Willis posed together for her campaign. They were
striking images, but perhaps her most arresting advertisements
were the ones that starred model Rosemary McGrotha circa 1992, right
hand in the air, being sworn in, presumably as the president of the
United States. Karan’s oeuvre ranged well beyond those early jersey separates, as
the photos of McGrotha in her smartly tailored suit suggests. For my
part, I’ll never forget the long, dévoré velvet dresses of 1996,
suspended from the skinniest of straps and exposing no small amount of
skin. Her flair for travel and her yoga practice have informed countless
other collections. In my early days at Women’s Wear Daily, Karan’s name was
often linked to her biggest competitors: Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.
It was always “Donna, Calvin, and Ralph.” They were at the absolute
pinnacle of American fashion. In the nearly 20 years since, if Karan’s
dominance on the runway has waned, her outspokenness certainly hasn’t.
She has often talked about the senselessness of delivering winter
clothes in July and summer ones in January. And, of course, she has been
very vocal about her causes through Urban Zen. Karan celebrated her 30th anniversary last year with a special show
downtown, not far from the Stock Exchange, where she took her company
public in 1996. Fashion was in the midst of a Donna Karan moment at the
time, with younger designers reinterpreting her signature jersey draping
and burnout velvet gowns. She may no longer be running one of America’s
most important brands, but her influence will continue.
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