Thursday, 29 September 2011

NYFW | Easy to Love Clothes - Donna Karan



New York Fashion Week - Donna Karan Spring/Summer 2012

For me, one of the most expressive collections - The passion and obsession of Donna Karan have been a guilding principle of every single thing that the designer has done since she has started back in the eighties. Karan's initial success was founded on the Seven Easy Pieces that she came up with, but now the aim of those - to help and empower women through easy wear, easy to understand, easy to love clothes has taken on more universal concerns; helping and empowering has taken a bigger, more dramatic narrative arc. So it is that with next spring's collection we travel, courtesy of Karan, to Haiti, where she has been spending a lot of her time, throwing her energies into rebuilding communities there through initiatives that will foster the notion of exporting Haitian craftsmanship and artistry to the world. Enjoy this fabulous Spring collection, and at the end of this post you'll get linked to the Donna Karan Fashion Show by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories - The Fashion Channel.







Donna Karan's Urban Zen store has carried quietly beautiful graphic mud-colored wraps made in Haiti, with the proceeds of the sales going to charities she supports there. Her spring, though, is all about her idea of the island, with, for instance, the pinwheel prints on full, draped cotton skirts inspired by the likes of Port-au-Prince artist Phillipe Dodard. It is, in essence, a paean to a land she has come to love. That's the back-story, so what about the clothes? And that's were we return to the guiding impulse that led her to set up the company in the first place; fanciful notions don't mean anything, she realize, unless they're grounded in reality. The more explicity literal renderings of her theme aside, Karan drew, then, on Haiti to give her an earthy brown and bone-color palette (with the occasional flash of intense violet; purple is the accent color of spring 2012), and used it for clothes that spoke of ways to soften urban dressing, like a chic pale creamy white  stretch cotton canvas dress flatteringgly draped at the neck, the narrowed, then let loose in controlled waves of volume.




Donna Karan offered up a simple city uniform of organza shirts over gently undulating skirts worn with stretch band sandals on substantial flat-wedge heels. It's the pieces in the Dodard-ian prints that are, though, the heart and soul of the collection. And with the surface of clothes having become so important thus far this season thanks to the endless, endless procession of prints on the runway, Karan's passion for the source of her patterns means that hers go away, way deeper.















































































































by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories - The Fashion-Channel

Photography by Marcio Madeira/firstView
Source:VOGUE


Enjoy my previous DKNY-post - 



2 comments:

Shagun said...

Exquisite designs...earthy tones of colors...rust orange,grass green, mud colors...I love the prints & how they are placed. Most attractive are the gowns..with fine details & figure hugging.Full, gathered skirts are artistic chic.

Unlikely You said...

Nice blog. I like your posts!

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