Not too long ago in America, a ”designing woman” was either a Machiavellian schemer or a female who ”did” houses in her spare time for pin money.
Today Diane Legge Lohan builds skyscrapers in Chicago, Laurinda Spear is a partner in one of the country`s hottest young architectural firms, and after 17 years of designing clothes under the Anne Klein label, Donna Karan recently launched a firm of her own on Manhattan`s Seventh Avenue.
They are among a new generation of women–the first in American design
–who have the potential to make it big in the 1990s.
Although there always have been outstanding women in American design, they tended to be just that: outstanding because there were so few of them. In the 1970s, as feminist pressure brought a change in attitudes toward women and women`s attitudes toward themselves, the nation`s design schools saw an influx of women bent on professional design careers.
Currently, the superstars in almost every American design field are men:
the Calvin Kleins and Ralph Laurens of fashion, the Mario Buattas and John Saladinos of interior design, the Helmut Jahns and Michael Graveses of architecture.
But America`s next superstars may be women working their way up through the ranks. For them to make it, they will have to deal with a wider array of options and difficult decisions, many of which hinge not on acceptance in traditional male fields but on the traditional cultural and biological demands of being women.
”I think women are a very strong force in design today,” says David Levy, executive dean of Parsons School of Design in New York. As for significant numbers of them reaching the point of superstardom, he believes it`s simply a matter of time.
Taking the fashion field as an example, he points out that ”Ralph Lauren, among other things, is a real entrepreneur. He`s a man who had a particular vision for himself and went out and did it. Ralph Lauren built an empire. In order to do that, you have to have a certain self-image. Donna Karan may very well have that self-image, but she`s 10 years younger. It may be just too early to tell.”
”I would say that of this big group of women who are coming through now, we still have five to 10 years before we`re going to be hitting that point of superstardom,” agrees 35-year-old Chicago architect Diane Legge Lohan. ”But of this group, someone is going to make it. I`m sure of that,” says Lohan, who was the first female partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the most prestigious architectural firms in the world.
”Architecture is not an overnight stardom or overnight career. It`s not like making $1 million by the time you`re 25,” she says. ”To do a project at the scale I work at takes four to five years, minimum. So a 20-year-period in architecture is a relatively short amount of time. The first 10 years, you`re just getting your feet wet. The next 10 years, you`re building projects that are expressive of your beliefs and talents to convince people to do what you want them to do. So the media stars, if you really look at them, are men in their mid-40s who are considered the `new` architects. It`s not something that happens overnight.”
One of the problems facing women in all types of design is the sheer complexity of women`s lives today, says Donna Karan, who has just formed a clothing-design company under her own name. At 36, Karan is one of the most highly respected designers in America and among those with the greatest potential for being America`s fashion superstars in the 1990s.
”I tend to believe that women`s careers are double-folded and triple-folded careers. Their `careers` are something more than their `work,` and they can`t give the same amount of time and energy (to their work) as men can. Most women I know who are at a certain age level, who have `made it,` also have balanced lives–homes and children–and they have to give a tremendous amount of themselves to that,” says Karan, who has an 11-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old stepson.
”You know, when I get home at night, I still believe in shifting my role, serving my husband–cooking dinner, taking care of the child, organizing her life–to the point that my main focus is not my work. But it`s a part of my career. I think that`s what you talk about when you think of women today,” she says.
”And I think it costs an awful lot to be famous. It`s more travel, more promotion, more getting-out-and-meeting, and more socializing. I think a woman is still a bit, not confused, but cluttered in everything that she`s taking care of today,” says Karan. ”When we discuss success and women, I tend to personalize it, maybe a bit much, because I understand the complications of having a child.”
The demands of family life, however, can have a tremendous impact on the careers of women in design and often result in hard choices and sacrifice.
”There you are, in the middle of a career, and there are all these other responsibilities that are important to you as well,” says Laurinda Spear, 33, a partner in Miami-based Arquitectonica, one of the country`s hottest young architectural firms.
”As soon as I had kids, that was the most important thing in my life,”
says Spear, who has a 4-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. ”I think we all think it`s the most important thing, so we don`t resent it or begrudge it. That`s just the way it is.”
Spear has been fortunate, she says, in that she lives three minutes away from the office and her husband is also one of the three Arquitectonica partners, affording her some flexibility. For others, however, children can mean a significant slowdown or even an end to a promising career in big-time architecture.
Chicagoan Lohan says, ”Frankly, my peer group within the firm–those of us in our 30s–has been totally wiped out within the last two or three years because they left to have children. And none of them has come back.” She is married (to architect Dirk Lohan) but has no children.
”I think it`s more difficult for women, since they carry the babies, to create a difference between work and home. I have a 9-year-old daughter and a pretty full life,” says Kathryn Conover, 37, a fashion designer who has her own $15-million dress division at Leslie Fay and another baby on the way.
”Being a designer is an incredibly high-voltage life. The pressures of coming up with five collections a year–it`s like a revolving door; it never stops,” she says.
”But there`s progress. There is hope. There is a need to be more adventurous. Design is a great field for women. It`s wide open, and I don`t see any reason it won`t be that way in the future.”
MRS. H. WINTER
Harriet Winter–the maverick, the off-Seventh Avenue individualist with the wonderful laugh and the down-to-earth philosophy based on fantasy.
I did nothing with these hands. I grew up thinking these hands were to be manicured twice a week. And now I can do anything with these hands. I can sit by a bedside and hold the hand of someone who is not well. I can make a phone call every single day to someone who needs me. I can make chicken soup for you if you catch a cold. And I can make clothes, beautiful clothes.
They`re wonderful. They really are. It only takes two minutes and you`re at home with them. I do know that no matter where you wear them, when you walk into a room, you`ll be seen in them. But they let you take over; they won`t take you over. They aren`t the kind that you pull and tug or have to work at or figure out. They become part of you. I get love letters from women. ”I`ve been noticed,” they say.
I make the clothes I make–that have the shape they have, the lines, the outside seaming–because I`m Harriet, Harriet Winter. I`m not so sure that if I were a male and had the same philosophy that I might not do the same things. It could be Harry or Henry Winter.
In the scheme of things, in my fantasy, I am happy if I can add a little something to someone`s life. To go and make the same dress that everyone else is designing, that`s not it.
Maybe it sounds a little too philosophical to say you take making clothes this seriously. But I, Harriet Winter, do. This is part of me, this is my raison d`etre, my life`s work, and I love it. It is my painting, my poetry, and right now it is my life. If the women who buy my clothes get a little something from them or enjoy their lives a little more, it makes me very happy. That`s why I`m doing it. And that`s why I can`t seem to join the mainstream.
My husband, Lewis, and I were in the antique-clothing business, and then I began making clothes out of the old clothes–redoing them.
I remember exactly when I really started to design. It was in 1972 in February and we were in Paris, walking, and I said to Lew, ”I want to be a designer. I really want to be a designer.”
I hired someone who was about 24 hours ahead of me in experience. I was chief presser because I couldn`t sew. I had to teach myself how to sew, to make patterns, to drape. Mrs. H. Winter for Yesterday`s News was born; through the years, we dropped the Yesterday`s News.
My first ”collection” was five pieces. When the first store bought it, it was wonderful. I had been a mother, a housewife, a chauffeur, a first-class dilettante, and now I was going to sell a product that I had made. This was the thrill of my life. It was the turning point.
I believe that women are great, that they have an inner strength, and I cannot see a woman getting on to a trend that makes her look like a powder puff or a silly-looking lady or an ”Isn`t she cute?”
She should be able to ask, ”Am I comfortable? Will it hold up? Am I pretty?” It`s all this. If you can make that into a reality for somebody, that`s beautiful, and that`s what I want to do.
