During the panel The Power of Reinvention moderated by Michelle Lee, Kay Unger and Donna Karen talked about their stories of success and how business started for them, both emphasizing on the aspect of the un-expectedness of life. Donna Karan first accentuated the fact that she never wanted to go into the fashion industry because both of her parents worked in fashion, instead, Karan wanted to become an illustrator. However, obstacles arose for Karan on her pursuit of being an illustrator, and eventually ended up in Parsons as a fashion design major. Her mentality towards fashion shifted as she realized her passion for dressing people as they are. She developed interests in expressing her desire for comfort in her designs, effectively targeting a consumer group, which was the working women who seek comfort in fashion. Finding an emphasis on the connection between customers and the products is a significant part of our project of designing an experience for a partner, since our partners are essentially the client, and the experience itself being the product. As Karan pointed out, branding is a key component of a business. The brand name should be representative of the products, demonstrating a consistency in style. It ties in with our project that we also need to target particular aspects of our partners’ lives to effectively generate an empathetic experience.
Demonstrated by instances in their lives, both Unger and Karan emphasized on the fact that things don’t often go as planned, and I think it reflects in the un-expectedness in our projects too. We can’t predict how exactly our partners would feel when they begin on the experience, and there’s a beauty in the spontaneity of what feelings are generated during the different experiences.
