NEW YORK — Bonnie Young has a demanding job as senior creative director for Donna Karan, but that hasn’t stopped her from launching a signature collection of children’s clothing and furniture.
As her 18-year-old stepson, Teo Babini, told her, “You come home from work to go to work.”
It’s true. Young typically finds herself working until around 3 a.m. The night-early morning shift is needed to square everything away for Saturday’s debut of her lifestyle collection at the Donna Karan store at 819 Madison Avenue here. She credited Karan with helping to make her business materialize, by agreeing to buy the collection sight unseen.
Young started designing clothes for her daughter, Celia Isadora, when she was born five and a half years ago. A few years later, she designed a bed for the child and had it made because she was unable to find one that she liked. Friends who saw the finished bed loved it and encouraged her to do other pieces of furniture, too.
Young’s handiwork also got some attention at the wedding of Gabby Karan, Donna Karan’s daughter, when she dressed the flower girls and the ring boy. She toyed with the idea of designing a children’s collection last April but was sidetracked by a major housing renovation project and her second pregnancy. Now that her West Village loft is refurbished and her son, Brando Noah Babini, is a year and a half, Young is ready to really dive into the children’s business.
“I never sleep; I’m overwhelmed,” she said, laughing.
In an effort to control expenses, Young has been working from her apartment with the help of a few interns. The collection, which consists of organic underwear, cashmere separates, knitwear and woven pieces, will be sold exclusively at Donna Karan’s Upper East Side store for the first season. It might also be available in the designer’s London store.
The merchandise is geared to affluent shoppers, with wholesale prices starting at $8 for an organic cotton cap and topping off at $400 for a boiled cashmere coat. The furniture ranges from $300 for a hand-carved chair to $6,800 for the queen-size bed Young initially designed for her daughter. There are plans to sell the collection to other stores next season, including international ones.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
But even 14 years of working at Donna Karan didn’t fully prepare Young for her new endeavor.
“I don’t have to deal with production with my day job,’’ she said. “It’s more about research and creativity. With the children’s collection, I’ve done everything, A to Z, dealing with lawyers…production, designing sketches.”
There are other differences, too. “When you have a day job, you get stressed but you go home at night,’’ she said. “You don’t sleep, breathe and eat work. When it’s your own thing, it’s very scary.”
The likelihood of becoming a children’s wear designer wasn’t something that had been on Young’s radar. “Six years ago I wrote ‘Colors of the Vanishing Tribes’ about my travels for inspiration for Donna Karan,’’ she said. “My life was totally different. Before my daughter was born, I don’t think I had ever picked up a baby.”