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After studying at New York City's Parsons School of Design, Karan went to work at 19 for Anne Klein, another lady who was notoriously hard to please. "Donna idolized Annie, and she was afraid of her," recalls Burt Wayne, head of the Anne Klein design studio and a good friend of both women. Wayne recalls meeting Karan for the first time when he visited Klein at her apartment. Donna was standing on the terrace with Klein, showing her various fabrics. "Her hair was blowing, the fabrics were flying. You could instantly see Donna's enthusiasm -- and her tenacity." When Klein died in 1974, Karan took over the reins, just four years after arriving at the company. By this time she had married her first husband, Mark Karan, a clothing-boutique owner, and had given birth to their daughter Gabby. Donna later divorced Karan and married sculptor Stephan Weiss, whom she had known as a teenager.
At Anne Klein, Karan worked with her co-designer, Louis dell'Olio, to protect the legacy of the label while moving the business forward. In 1983 they launched Anne Klein II, a successful line of clothes for working women. But, ever restless, Karan was eager to assert her creative identity. Executives at Takiyho, the Japanese conglomerate that owned a majority stake in Anne Klein, urged her to start her own label, but she was uncertain. So in 1984 Takiyho fired her, simultaneously agreeing to back her new company.
Six months later, Karan mounted her first show. The eternally jaded fashion crowd gave her a standing ovation, whistling, wildly shouting her name. A month after that, she broke records at a special sale for customers of Bergdorf Goodman, the premier U.S. fashion retailer. Dawn Mello, then Bergdorf's president, recalls the scene when the sale ended: "Donna burst into tears and sat on the floor, weeping, amazed at what she had done."
Over the years, Karan has consistently demonstrated a golden commercial touch, but not by taking the predictable approach or by heeding conventional wisdom. As Vogue's Wintour says, "Donna quite enjoys breaking the rules." Before Karan, for example, most designers' second collections were watered- down versions of their high-priced lines. Karan did something entirely different when she opened her second line, DKNY, in 1989. She offered stylish, casual and affordable clothes without cannibalizing her main collection. Under the direction of Karan's advertising guru, Peter Arnell of the Arnell/Bickford agency, the new line was shrewdly marketed with a portfolio of black-and-white cityscapes that emphasized its distinctive urban persona. Its revenues should hit $185 million this year.
No less contrarian was Karan's approach to the hosiery business. In 1987 the designer became convinced that women would spend more money if they could find heavier, more opaque pantyhose to cloak the sags that most female flesh is heir to. The product that she and her licensee, Hanes, came up with was nearly twice as thick and twice as expensive as usual hose. "Everyone here thought we were on drugs," recalls Hanes vice president Cathy Volker. But the gamble paid off. Customers recognized the superior quality and paid for it. This year the business is likely to gross $30 million at wholesale.