DKNY Spring 2012: The Ultimate New York Woman

Photo: DKNY 2012 Spring Collection, courtesy of DKNY.

I must publicly admit - [or rather, declare?!] - that Donna Karan has been always one of my favorite American designers. She seems to know not only what a woman wants - globally! - but she's actually one of the rare designers, who makes the clothes to fit any woman - any size, any age, any profession - she just seems to know the woman's body very, very well.

Donna Karan is the ultimate designer who makes the clothes that are rather flattering - they actually make your body, as imperfect as it could be, beautiful - and not the clothes that make you look 'weird' and uncomfortable. As Chanel once said 'a woman should look as she is wearing the clothes, not the clothes wear a woman...' And that's exactly how Donna Karan's clothes, footwear and accessories are - they are meant to be worn, not the other way around.

Everything that Donna Karan makes are chick and can be worn around the world as her designs are usually the classy stylish kind of clothes that seem to leave through the time. Once you have something by her, you keep wearing it through the years and it does not fade to become not 'in style' - it's always in style. Trust me, those wedges from her Spring 2012 collection would be as 'in' in a few years, as they are today.

While Donna Karan's label is to meet the demands of classy fashionable women across the world - [her brand is sold in absolutely every country of the world] - what she's known for the most, is for her very New York style.

Perhaps it's the fact that Karan has been always living and creating out of her New York City studio/showroom, but she knows very well what a New York woman wants and needs. That explains why it was just natural for her to go ahead and diversify to meet the specific needs of a city woman with her DKNY label, which, as you can guess, stands for Donna Karan New York. 

The label is so happening that women from other countries want it. They crave it. They come to her fashion shows to see it, because, want to admit it or not - it's the New York woman that sets trends for the rest of the world. Despite the very stylish women in Paris, Milan, and London - it's, ultimately, a New York woman who's looked upon to the style, making DKNY one of the most sought after brand.

In this DKNY Spring 2012 collection, Donna Karan is addressing the perennial conundrum of what to wear for summer in this city. How can a woman in the city as busy, difficult, diverse and disperse over a very large island stay - both comfortable and stylish? It's what we, New York women, perplex over every time, every year...

It's tough to strike a balance on those days, when: go for comfort and you look as if you'd rather be in the suburbs sitting by a pond. Go for a more formal look and you look as if your life is all about business and work. So, Karan's answer to make a city woman both stylish and comfortable is to add that most often missing in the other designers' clothes and footwear element that unites comfort with a high fashion style - a polished chick breezy (both colorful and solid black/white) element to a wide-brimmed sun hat, wedges, loose dolman-sleeved shirts and mullet-hemmed slip-dresses that look as something a city woman could wear both to office, business dinner, out on the city and - to lounging at a rooftop pool overlooking the skylines of Manhattan.

Judging by her Spring 2012 collection, one would see that no other designer fetishizes New York like Donna Karan. Thus, it becomes obvious, why she had her collection set against the backdrop of a yellow cab - it's because we, New York women, do like our cabs, especially when we want to rest our feet in our stylish wedges from all the walking we do in the city like New York... 

My personal Thank you to Aliza Licht for providing me with such great images!