Less than a year after fashion icon Donna Karan stepped down from the helm of the company that she founded, its owner — luxury goods giant Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy — is selling off the entire raft of game-changing brands that she founded, Page Six has learned.
The French empire — which has owned Karan’s company since 2001, even though she stayed on to run the brands — shelved her flagship line Donna Karan International shortly after she left in June 2015 and said it would “substantially increase its focus” on her DKNY brand, which revolutionized women’s fashion in the ’80s with Karan’s “Seven Easy Pieces” concept of a wardrobe made up of a handful of interchangeable items.
But we’re told that after seven months of disappointing performance under new designers Maxwell Osbourne and Dao-Yi of the Pubic School brand, LVMH has decided to sell both DKNY and DKI. We’re told the company, which also owns Marc and Givenchy, among dozens of other blue chip brands, is targeting a single, specific American buyer, rather than putting it out to multiple bidders.
Negotiations are said to be ongoing, but a price has not yet been agreed.
“Donna Karan and DKNY was a mega brand in the US, but all the things [LVMH] has done to change it and take it forward just haven’t worked,” said an insider, “The word is that they have a buyer in mind and have approached a US company to buy the brand, but it is not yet clear if the deal is going forward.”
Reps didn’t get back to us.