Order Out of Chaos - The Designs of Donna Karan
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Donna Karan's creative process can be summarized as follows: 1) Karan is inspired by the constant state of chaos in her life that drives her to create new fashion designs. 2) Her designs emerge through a complex dynamical system where inspiration flows into her work like an energy flux undergoing a phase transition, becoming organized by a "strange attractor" into new patterns. 3) Karan sees fashion as a canvas for empowering women, drawing from both Eastern and Western influences in an ongoing process of exploration and renewal.
Order Out of Chaos - The Designs of Donna Karan
- 1. Order Out of Chaos The Designs of Donna Karan by Vietanh Nguyen
- 2. Contents Introduction The Signature Pieces The Creative Process The Creative Process as a Dynamical System Conclusion References
- 3. Introduction “I live in a constant state of chaos; it’s what drives me to create.” -- Donna Karan
- 4. Introduction “Because Donna Karan brings some Zen into the lives of crazed working women.” -- Vanity Fair on citing Donna Karan as a Fashion Week Designer
- 11. The Creative Process as Seen by Karan “Each season I start where I began – with the body.” “How the clothes relate to the body, how they move and feel, is what’s important to me.”
- 12. The Creative Process as Seen by Karan “I don’t see just one woman when I design. It’s always a universe of women. Strong, passionate women, women who are true to themselves and their visions. I see clothes as a canvas to their individuality. The woman should always be the first thing you see, not her clothes.”
- 13. The Creative Process as Seen by Karan “… I have found that the intersection of East and West is a realm of endless creativity, a place of emotional and aesthetic energy I return to again and again, each time finding something new to explore.”
- 14. The Creative Process as Seen by Karan “I inhale all the beautiful inspiration I can, and then exhale it into a collection.” -- Donna Karan
- 15. The Creative Process as a Dynamical System The creative process can be modeled as a dynamic open system operating in the chaos of an energy flow and going through a phase transition. At the phase transition, the energy flux through the system becomes organized by what is called a strange attractor into emerging new ordered patterns.
- 16. In Dialogue with the Universe First there is an open system operating in an energy or information flux - there is an exchange of entropy between the outside and the inside.
- 17. As a Bioenergetics Process The resulting coupling is similar to that of a bioenergetics process, where the “foodstuffs” represent the inspiration and the assembled “ATP” acts as an intermediary between the provision and the use of inspiration.
- 18. A Cascade of Catalytic Steps Upon encountering with “hormones”, the “ATP” may start off a cascade of catalytic steps.
- 19. Phase Transition The cascade may lead to instabilities through repeated self- amplifying feedback. At such a point of instability, or a bifurcation point, the system goes through a phase transition. At the phase transition, ordered patterns may emerge spontaneously through a strange attractor.
- 20. Strange Attractor “The form which embodies that which appeared in consciousness – that is to be held within consciousness.” -- Upanishads
- 21. Strange Attractor What kind of orbit could be drawn in a bounded space so that it would never repeat itself and never cross itself? The energy flow that produced chaos begins to become organized by the strange attractor into emerging new patterns.
- 22. Strange Attractor “Curving back upon my own nature, I create again and again.” -- Bhagavad-Gita
- 23. Poincaré Returns Exposing an Attractor’s Structure To see the structure within, a slice can be taken through an attractor, a so-called Poincaré section or Poincaré return map. The map reduces a three- dimensional flow to two dimensions without loss of meaningful information.
- 24. Tangle within a Poincaré Section Slices of an attractor show tangle within each slice.
- 25. What Tangle Means Tangle within a Poincaré section implies variations on a theme.
- 26. Variations on a Theme Three variations on a theme in red.
- 27. Variations on a Theme Silhouette Three variations on the theme of body-sculpted silhouette.
- 28. Fugue in Fashion Design Like J.S. Bach experimenting with fugues in classical music, Donna Karan likes to experiment with variations on a theme in fashion design.
- 29. Conclusion “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” -- André Gide
- 30. References Ingrid Sischy, The Journey of a Woman: 20 Years of Donna Karan, Assouline, 2004 Christian de Duve, Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005 Christian de Duve, A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, Scientific American Books, 1984
- 31. References Ralph Abraham and Christopher Shaw, Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior, Addison-Wesley, 1992 Ivar Ekeland, Mathematics and the Unexpected, The University of Chicago Press, 1988 James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking, 1987 Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, Shambala, 1984 Julien Sprott, Strange Attractors: Creating Patterns in Chaos, M&T Books, 1993