Donna Karan

Born as Donna Faske in Forest Hills, NY, in 1948, to a model mother and a haberdasher father, later named Donna Karan was obsessed with fashion from an early age. Following two years at Parsons School of Art and Design, she went to work at Anne Klein, making moderately priced sportswear. In 1971, she became associate designer and, after Anne Klein passed on in 1974, became co-designer with Louis Dell'Olio. Ten years later, and with the support of her husband Steven Weiss, Karan founded Donna Karan New York. Donna Karan is one of the most definite and recognisable names in American and world fashion today. Donna Karan is most famous for inventing "the body" garment, one of the most practical items of clothing to come out of the Eighties.

Launched in 1985, her first collection, though not radical, delivered a system of dressing which was considered as entirely new to those used to Eighties power suits. She combined elements of tailoring with sportswear to ensure that the clothes were "user-friendly and luxurious", as well as deeply flattering. Her clothes are rarely headline-grabbing or innovative, but are always easy-to-wear in a luxurious blend of cashmeres and Lycras and also, a sophisticated palette dominated by blues and blacks seems to appear very often in her designs. Donna Karan is also considered as one of the chief innovators of the bridge line: in 1988, she introduced the cheaper DKNY label in an attempt to dress her daughter Gaby. Today, Karan's company also produces menswear, jeans, accessories, hosiery, fragrance and many different kinds of cosmetics.

In the year of April 2001, Karan announced that she had sold her company, Donna Karan International, to French luxury conglomerate LVMH for almost $250 million in cash. LVMH had previously acquired Karan's license-holding company, Gabrielle Studio, bringing the total value of the sale up to $643 million. Following the news, LVMH decided to relocate this most American of American companies to Italy.
 

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