The catty feuding, subtle snubs, and artificial air kisses so often expected of the fashion world are refreshingly absent from the memoir of American style icon Donna Karan.
“As a designer, my goal has always been to help women feel good about themselves,” said Karan, who recently held a book-signing event for My Journey at Tecolote Book Shop in Montecito. Karan was at the center of the way the American professional woman dressed for more than three decades, but she says her focus was always on the woman inside the clothes and not the clothes themselves. “I don’t think any woman wants to be thought of as wearing an attractive dress,” she said. “You want to be what’s attractive, not the dress.”
Karan was born in New York where her mother worked as a fashion model, often for her father, who was a skilled suit tailor. “I was born into it,” explained Karan. “Fashion was my destiny.” Karan lost her father when she was still a young child and was left with her absent and erratic mother.