Donna Karan | Iconic Smart Sensuality Woman's Designer

Photo via French Institute Alliance Francaise, NYCHeart, body and soul all come together in Donna Karan’s designs. The designer has never run away from the complications, feelings and emotions associated with being a woman.

“Mannish” is never a word used to describe Donna Karan’s clothes. “Womanly is.”

Donna Karan always designed clothes for strong, ambitious women with real bodies and complicated lives. Karan’s clothes always maximized the assets of an athletic, curvaceous woman. Presumably, she cut a size 0, but a tall, size 8 looks great in Donna Karan clothes.

Donna Karan Fall 2009, Style.comKaran first inherited responsibilities for the Anne Klein collection in 1974, with Klein’s death from cancer. Ten years later, Donna Karan launched her own company, grounded on a modern system of dressing, based on Seven Easy Pieces.

This system of dressing included a bodysuit, a blazer, and, of course, leggings—with stretch jersey, lots of black, and strong shoulders creating a variety of body-sculpted silhouettes.

Padded shoulders are proliferating on the runways again. Donna Karan showed the silhouette this week. As always, Karan’s shoulders are strong without being cartoonish. They are goddess shoulders that belong to goddess women.

In the course of a long and illustrious career, Karan has experienced her “chasing butterflies” moments, inspired by perhaps one too many ancient archetypes. She remains a tower of power when returning to her essential philosophy of designing sexy clothes for Sensible and Sensual women, as she did this week.

Donna Karan epitomizes the women featured in Anne of Carversville’s Smart Sensuality writing.

Donna Karan Fall 2009, Style.comSmoldering sexuality is Karan’s specialty. The Donna Karan woman understands that femme fatale seduction is often about what’s not revealed, rather than exposed breasts and skirts slit up the thigh. A glimpse of skin is often more seductive than total exposure, particularly in public.

“Embracing a new reality, empowering a woman with strength and security, inspiring her senses, touching her soul … For me, it begins with reflecting on our core essence, as we forge into the future with creativity and confidence and a renewed love of Manhattan, our city, our home,” Karan wrote in her notes at last Monday’s Fall 2009 Fashion Show, set in her downtown studio and graced by White House social secretary Desiree Rogers, who had one of the best seats in the house next to Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour. 

Donna Karan International went public in 1996, and five years later was bought for $243 million by French conglomerate LVMH, which threw in an additional $400 million to buy the corporate entity that owns the brands themselves.

Karan has been named the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year three times and was honored with the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. The DKNY name now appears on menswear, jeans, lingerie, activewear, home wares, and fragrance.

Donna Karan’s husband, sculptor, painter and business manager Stephan Weiss, died of lung cancer in 2001. Madam Karan has recently been seen out and about in New York, with much younger men. At 60 or almost, Donna Karan is another Smart Sensuality woman blasting through the stereotypes of what aging is for today’s sensually engaged woman.

I’ve dropped in Style.com photos of Donna Karan’s new Fall collection. Enjoy the Fashion Show, in two parts. Anne

Donna Karan, Fall 2009 Part 1

Donna Karan, Fall 2009 Part 2