DKNY CEO and creative directors depart
DKNY has confirmed that creative directors Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow and its CEO Caroline Brown will leave the business by the end of the year.
The news comes as GIII Apparel Group completes its acquisition of the brand from luxury conglomerate LVMH, which was agreed in July of this year.
It is understood LVMH agreed to sell the brand following an unsolicited approach from GIII, which produces and distributes clothing under license for a number of brands including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Karl Lagerfeld and Ivanka Trump, and also owns brands including Vilebrequin, Andrew Marc, Marc New York, Bass, GH Bass and Weejuns.
Creative directors Chow and Osbourne, the designers behind cult US label Public School which they founded in 2008, had been drafted in to DKNY in May 2015 by LVMH to reboot the business. Their last collection for DKNY was shown at New York Fashion Week in September, which received a warm response from fashion critics after the previous collection was deemed somewhat too "street" for DKNY which was founded as bridge line to the Donna Karan mainline in 1989.
The Donna Karan mainline has now been discontinued and Donna Karan herself left the business in 2015 to concentrate on her new lifestyle venture Urban Zen.
Chow and Osborne will now focus on their own label while Brown's next move has not yet been confirmed.
