DKNY

Even in the fast-paced city of New York, women have no excuse to be unstylish. With little time to pull out the perfect look, busy urbanites resort to one fashion house with a door that spells DKNY.

Fashion genius Donna Karan is the name behind New York City’s international fashion brand DKNY, which simply stands for Donna Karan New York.

DKNY serves as a popular fashion window of trendy head-to-toe fashion wear and accessories, which include handbags, for women who wants to be stylish but are too busy to allocate so much time in going through their wardrobe for the perfect mix and match.

The DKNY city handbag, for instance, appealed best for stylish women on the go after encapsulating smart elegance and functionality on its accessory lines.

How this designer, who is also known as Donna Faske, pulled all these together? Let’s take a look.

Family
Karan’s fashion brilliance creatively began in Long Island, New York, where she was born and raised by fashion-oriented parents.

According to the DKNY official website, her father Gabby Faske was a tailor while her mother Helen was a showroom model and fashion sales representative. And when Karan’s father died when she was just three years old, her mother married Harold Flaxman, who is also into fashion business.

In 1964, Karan, with early influences at hand, virtually debuted on fashion design while still in high school where she staged her first collection show. A couple months after that, she launched her fashion career by selling clothes at a neighborhood boutique.

Four years later she enrolled in the premier Parson’s School of Design, where prominent designer Anne Klein spotted her and hired Karan for a summer job. She was still in her second year at Parson’s then.

Although working with Anne Klein appears to give Karan a promising career, it was with equally talented and established designer Patti Appall that the young Karan bloomed as a designer.

Balance

Her long and vast experience in working with great designers, she learned that the secret of a perfect design is balance.
“Always balance comfort with luxury and practical with the desirable,” Karan shares.

Towards the end of 1984, Karan, together with her husband Stephan Weiss, established DKNY baring a perfect balance of wearable elite and urban mindset designs on its first collection in the fall of 1985.

Handbags

Eventually, the fashion house made handbag versions of its trademark New York street-smart look design.

Famous DKNY Handbags include $1,000-dollar The D Handbag, the ranched leather DKNY Antique Calf Hobo Handbag, and the DKNY Buckle Hobo Handbag.

Stellar clients of the handbags include Barbara Streisand, Demi Moore, Vanessa Minillo, Victoria Beckham, and Rachel Bilson, among others.

According to Karan her feminine instincts also contributed to the success of the fashion company.

“Being a woman makes me want to nurture others, fulfill needs and solve problems. At the same time, the artist within me strives for beauty, both sensually and visually,” she shares on her website.

Today, DKNY continues to showcase head-to-toe fashion lines, which now include lines for men and kids, appealing to both urban taste and lifestyle.

Karan has also earned numerous awards including the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s (CFDA) unprecedented six-time recognition. In fact, although French luxury conglomerate Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) acquired DKNY in 2001, Karan’s trademark urban style continues to be carried on.

Under holding company Donna Karan International, DKNY fashion lines could be availed in seventy company-owned and licensed freestanding Donna Karan Collection and DKNY stores worldwide.

Dangling a DKNY handbag, literally, lets you carry an active and true metropolitan fashion. If you want to pick one you know how the label spells.