Fall Fashion Preview
Donna Karan gets back to her New York roots with sleek and stylish urban chic collection
NEW YORK — Perhaps no designer is associated more with New York than Donna Karan. Her namesake premium line is officially called Donna Karan New York and the city initials are synonymous with her casual collection, DKNY.
It's a sleek urban look — one that is distinctively Donna Karan. Even after all these years, she retains her unique point of view.
In recent seasons, however, the designer has strayed a bit from her roots, with collections based on trips to Haiti and other far-flung locales. But now she's back to her first love, as evidenced by images of twinkling skyscrapers of the city that never sleeps as the backdrop for her fall Donna Karan collection, which evokes "the glamour of the New York skyline," she said in her program notes.
The collections draws from the colors of the city — it trades almost exclusively in midnight black, asphalt gray and charcoal with occasional burnished gold highlights from metallic brocades shining through — and the crisp tailoring is practically architectural, with sculpted jersey and jacquard dresses, pleated pinstripe trousers, wing-collared white shirts, origami dresses and brocade coats.
Karan often mixes in some of her iconic seven easy pieces in, so that metallic brocade trousers and a pinstripe jacket are worn over a jersey bodysuit or a tuxedo jacket and chiffon skirt are paired with a white cotton poplin tuxedo bodyshirt for the ultimate in chic nighttime dressing.
It's a sleek urban look — one that is distinctively Donna Karan. Even after all these years, she retains her unique point of view.