Fashion icons: Donna Karan, the designer who devised the seven basic pieces of a woman’s wardrobe

It is not surprising that Donna Ivy Faske (1948, Long Island), artistically known as Donna Karan, has always felt like a fish in water in the fashion sector. The daughter of a model mother and a tailor stepfather, she grew up among the fabrics of this industry.

When he was old enough to choose his studies, as expected, he enrolled in the prestigious Parsons School in New York to study fashion design. In 1966 she marries Mark Karan, from whom she would take her artistic last name, and a year later, the opportunity to work with Anna Klein arises, for which she departs from the academic world to immerse herself -fully- in In the labor market.

Anna Klein quickly promoted Karan to associate designer, and in 1974, when Klein died, the American dressmaker was left behind to run the firm along with her college friend Louis Dell’Olio. In 1983 Karan divorced her first husband and, a year later, she married the painter and sculptor Stephen Weiss, with whom she decided to leave the artistic direction of Anna Klein and found her own firm of the same name.

In 1985 Donna Karan launched her first collection, in which she established the seven essential pieces that should not be missing in a woman’s wardrobe -which later grew to 200-. This dressing system, which she called Seven Easy Days, consisted of seven interchangeable basic garments that could be combined perfectly with each other and that could be used for day or night in any season. The line was inspired by the modern and independent woman, and the garments were made with patterns of elegance and comfort to serve as ideal clothing for the incorporation of women into the labor market.

Years later, due to her great success, the designer begins to diversify her business and makes her way into the beauty, home and menswear industries. Thus, in 1880, Karan launched a more modern, fresh and youthful line, with the aim of democratizing her homonymous firm and making it more accessible. In 1990 she founded DKNY Jeans and two years later she dared to create a men’s collection.

Hilary Clinton’s head designer sold her firm in 2001 to the luxury conglomerate LVMH, but continued as creative director until 2015, when she was succeeded by designer couple Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, from Public School. In 2016 the brand is sold by LVMH to the G-III conglomerate.