A PRESTIGE HONG KONG EXCLUSIVE
A LIFE LESS FASHIONABLE - DONNA KARAN
by Stephen Short

Donna Karan has swapped dressing people for addressing them. While she still works as chief designer for Donna Karan International, she’s a woman on a personal journey, philanthropic and social, to advance wellness, preserve culture and empower children. Effecting change is not the job of others, she tells Prestige Hong Kong Deputy Editor Stephen Short, but starts with individual responsibility

IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT in April at 711 Greenwich Street in New York City, and American designer Donna Karan is holding a private gathering dedicated to her Urban Zen foundation and Madonna’s Spirituality For Kids concern. Karan has invited some of New York’s bon ton in the hope of raising awareness and money. This is not a VIP fashion party; there are no photographers or media. This is about promoting well-being, preserving culture and empowering children through integrative medicine, education and compassionate care. The site is the top floor of the studio owned by her late husband, artist Stephan Weiss, and the outdoor rooftop is rapturously calm. Midway through the event, a waiter walks up with a tray of canapés and asks if I’d care to try one. I tell him he looks familiar, like the Ralph Lauren model. “You have a good memory,” he says, “I am one of the Ralph Lauren models.” Amazed, I ask him why a Ralph Lauren model is serving food at a private event for Karan’s foundation. “We travel through life with rose-tinted glasses and turn a blind eye to what’s real,” he replies. “Donna Karan’s vision has helped remove those glasses so that we [the youth] can see what’s real and important. This is a great cause.”

The Donna Karan name has never been just about clothes. It’s been about lifestyles and mixing luxury with the practical and desirable for generations of American women. Her modern system of dressing, based on the concept of “seven easy pieces,” was predicated on a handful of interchangeable items that combined to create an entire wardrobe from day to evening, weekday to weekend, season to season. Her hallmarks became the colour black, most often in cashmere or jersey, leather, stretch and moulded fabrics and silhouettes that wrap and sculpt the body.

Behind the ease of the clothes was the fiercely independent spirit of the woman. Karan went to Parsons design school in New York but never graduated. Instead she took a job with Anne Klein, from which she was fired by Klein’s assistant after nine months. Later, out of work and out of school, the 19-year-old rang up Klein and asked for her job back. She got it and stayed for 10 years, during which time Klein died of cancer. After Klein’s death, Karan tried to start a niche business at the firm with a modern system of dressing, but her bosses declined. So in 1985, Donna Karan the brand was born. She founded the company with husband Weiss, and Donna Karan International (DKI) became a publicly traded enterprise in 1996. In 2001, the year Weiss died after a protracted battle with lung cancer, French luxury conglomerate LVMH acquired DKI for US$643 million. Karan remains chief designer.

Meanwhile, her priorities have switched from dressing people to addressing them. She’s gone social and philanthropic. Last year she set up Urban Zen, a group initiated as a result of her experiences with cancer sufferers. Karan believes too many people treat the disease, not the patient, and that healing should be an integration of Eastern and Western medicines and yoga. Urban Zen is the culmination of Karan’s philanthropic efforts. (Long-time friends Joyce Ma in Hong Kong and Christina Ong in Singapore are on the board of Urban Zen.) She’s also involved with Madonna’s Spirituality For Kids (SFK), set up to address children’s education and well-being. Karan, who turns 60 in October, sits on the boards of and raises funds for numerous causes in New York.

To meet Donna Karan in her office at 550, 7th Avenue (Fashion Avenue) on a bright, crisply cold New York April morning is a revelation. She’s not even meant to be in New York, but still finds time to graciously let me in. Dressed in her own black silhouette for Urban Zen, which has a boutique at 705 Greenwich Street, she’s polite, sparky and candid in conversation. It’s easy to see how she’s become such a role model for women the world over. Indeed, it wouldn’t be surprising if she made it to the White House, the address that was the starting point for our hour-long conversation, which took place in the company of Karan’s long-time friend, ’alter ego” and executive vice-president of global marketing and communications, Patti Cohen.

In 1992 you had an advertising campaign showing a female president taking office. It’s now April 2008 and we have Hillary Clinton running for president. As a woman (and a Clinton supporter), how does that make you feel?
I think it’s all about the concept of feminine energy, you know. And what is feminine energy? When you think about caring and sharing and mothers, that’s what women are about. What I do know is that we’re in a state of crisis right now and we need help. The way I look at it, this is not just about the United States – I think we’re looking at the world. The US does represent a model of the world. We’re probably the most international of all countries. And a president needs to be the world leader. The US is a place that needs to be the world leader, and I’m looking at the Dalai Lama – I don’t attach him just to Tibet – I see him as a world leader. And that’s the way I look at Bill Clinton – I see Bill Clinton as a world leader. I see the prospects of Hillary being a world leader. It’s a very complicated situation. I think [Barack] Obama’s great. I’m not going to say that I don’t. We’ve been governed by a Republican party that’s obviously not taking this country or this world where it needs to be. I would support either one of them because I think they both have the intention. I’m supporting Hillary because I do believe, regardless, that there’s a pair that comes together with this – the Clintons are together in this and I want to see Bill involved. I’m very involved in the Clinton initiative, from a philanthropic level. He has a world understanding, he has world respect, even though maybe the country does not right now – I think you can also say this about Al Gore – if you look at what these people have touched, it’s beyond the state of the minimal. There’s the experience – I don’t think just anyone walks into the White House in the middle of a crisis. You know, you go to somebody who’s got experience enough, and I think Hillary has the experience. She may not have been a vice-president but she has the experience. People say she doesn’t but I think she does.

And Obama?
Obama has run an amazing campaign. I’d love to meet him. I have a lot of technical questions, like, what are we doing about the educational system? What are we doing about caring for people, patients? Because in terms of what my journey is, aside from doing Donna Karan and DKNY . . . that’s a baby, no, it’s not a baby it’s an adult, it’s grown up. These are adult children right now and I’m fostering my next child, Urban Zen, while I’m still parenting the Donna Karan company.