“I don’t believe there has been a designer who has more consistently and thoughtfully addressed the complex needs of the modern dresser,” Vogue’s Anna Wintour wrote of Donna Karan in a 2001 Letter from the Editor.
A true—if perhaps low-key—iconoclast, Karan forever changed the way professional women outfit themselves with the debut in 1985 of Donna Karan New York, in which she introduced a concept she called “Seven Easy Pieces.” Karan proposed a wardrobe based on black, polished and subtly provocative, rendered in luxurious jersey and cashmere, built around a bodysuit, over which jackets, skirts, pants, and wraps could be layered. Today the idea might sound less than earthshaking, but a wardrobe of chic, basic, easy, monochrome separates was a revelation at the time.
“When I started my line, there was a void in the marketplace,” Karan said in 1994. “Everyone was doing ball gowns, pouf skirts, and Christian Lacroix, and the executive woman was having to wear a bow tie and sneakers to work. Ridiculous!”
Karan’s judgment and intuition have proven very prescient, and her contributions to American fashion number many more than seven. The softer, black-bodysuit-based wardrobe she championed can be seen as a precursor to the soft, black-legging-based wardrobe the masses would wear again two decades later. She ushered in the era of the “total look” with the opaque leg; embraced stretch early on; and, indeed, as The New York Times noted,“mainstreamed the concept of black.” Known for her fascination with Eastern religions, Karan was also an early adaptor of New Age philosophies in life as in dress, contributing to what Voguetermed the “ashram look,” with garments inspired by traditional garb observed on her travels to India and beyond.
Reflecting on herself in recent years as an “older, more spiritual woman,” the designer has over time increasingly catered to the inner goddess, favoring more embellishment and artisanal touches and turning out exquisitely draped gowns. “There are so many people who want you to go backward, and I want to go forward,” she told Vogue in 2001. “Life’s changing.” But while her aesthetic has evolved, two things remain ever constant. First, her pioneering “woman to woman” approach. Second, the brand’s cornerstone: “My inspiration,” Karan says, “is me.”
