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Donna Karan is another contemporary designer with unexceptional clothes. She occasionally comes up with attractive enough items, but nothing that cannot be found at Target, Walmart or Sears for a fraction of her designer label prices.
The top outfit from her DKNY Spring 2012 Ready-to-Wear collection is a pretty floral dress, yet it has a strange train that drags in the back. In the same collection, she gives us a formless kaftan, which is clearly a formal number given that the model has an odd clutch/bag wrapped around her hand.
This is the inconsistency of these pseudo-avant-garde designers. I think they are really trying hard to create original outfits, but their imaginations are pretty much dead. And because of their names, they still successfully convince wealthy women that spending thousands of dollars on dowdy kaftans is worth their money.
Karan also designs perfume. Her most popular perfume, Cashmere Mist, came out in 1994. It is a strong scent, but its sweet bergamot top note doesn't make it overwhelming.
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Here are the notes to Cashmere Mist:
Top: Bergamot
Middle: Jasmine, Lily of the Valley
Base: Musk, Sandalwood, Vanilla
Woman came out earlier, in 1992. The bottle is a squat and short, and presumably the shape of a woman's back.
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Despite its ugly container, Woman is still an interesting, layered perfume. The perfume site Fragrantica describes its notes as:
Fresh passions of apricot, bergamot, green notes, neroli, osmanthus, peach and pineapple burst out at the top, followed by a floral rhythm of carnation, cassia, heliotrope, jasmine, lily, orchid, rose and ylang-ylang at the heart of the fragrance. Bottom notes bring amber, benzoin, cedar, citruses, tonka bean, vanilla, vetiver, sandalwood, musk, suede, patchouli and incense.I tried the latest perfume by Karan, also called Woman and presumably a 2012 variation on the 1992 version, at my local department store. "It has a sweetish/citrusy smell," I said to the salesman, who gave me a sample.
Fragrantica's description of the perfume is: "The fragrance is built around the core of sandalwood and vetiver from Haiti, including notes of orange blossom..." So orange blossom was was the sweet, citrusy smell I detected.
The short list of notes in the new version of Woman is nothing compared to the original. And this is yet another example of how contemporary redesigns of original perfumes are dilute and weak.
And now on the bottle. Karan's husband worked on Cashmere Mist, his most successful flask design. His later design for Woman isn't as interesting as Cashmere Mist, but it isn't a complete failure.
Karan went to another designer to launch her newest variation of Woman. It is a cold, dark granite object, which doesn't resemble a flask. Where is the opening of the "flask"? where are is the liquid? Why is there a hollow center - doesn't it waste much needed space? Why is it black and sleek? Is that what modern women have become, cold as stone? These were the questions that went through my mind when I saw the flask.
The designer is Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born architect who calls herself British. She has taught at prestigious schools, and has won numerous international awards, but why does that leave me unimpressed? She is part of the architectural style that I call the Architecture of Death, which includes the contemporary architects Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry. Here's an article I wrote which I titled: Conquering the Architecture of Death. I suppose Hadid is trying to connect with her feminine self in designing this atrocity, which no feminine woman would want to put in her purse, let alone hold in her hands.
Women have to start refusing these ugly and clumsy interjections into their lives, and boycott these unimaginative, but greedy, modern designers. Let's start by telling our department store perfume salesmen what we really think of their unattractive goods.
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