Fashion Icon Takes On Medicine

May 9, 2007 — -- Donna Karan long ago established herself as a force in the fashion world. Now she's poised to revolutionize alternative medicine.

Next week, she'll host the Urban Zen Initiative's Well-Being Forum, a gathering of some of the nation's leading physicians and practitioners of alternative medicine. Their goal: to make hospitals more about healing the whole patient.

Karan wants to create a less stoic, more welcoming medical environment. One of the first items on her agenda: gracing hospital gowns with her signature style.

"I cannot wait to redesign hospital gowns," she said, talking about the mortifying, backless, paper-thin robes. "We're intimidated. Now is that good for our disease? No. So there has to be a better way."

Karan's ultimate goal is to create centers for patient advocacy and alternative healing, both in and outside of hospitals. The cause is one close to her heart. In 1995, Stephan Weiss, her husband and business partner, was diagnosed with lung cancer. The shock was overwhelming for Karan and Weiss, a nonsmoker.

"We would lay in bed and he'd say, 'Donny, we can look at this two different ways. We could be sad about it and get ourselves really upset. Or we can put our mind to it and look at the positive,'" she said.

They battled his cancer with conventional treatment and alternative remedies like herbal treatments and yoga.

"The surgeons were brilliant and the chemotherapy, the radiation," Karan said. "But it became very, very apparent to me that there was more to his care than just what was being offered at a hospital level."

Karan said that yoga helped Weiss breathe and infused his lungs with new life.

"His yoga teacher was there and realigned his body. It's as simple as kind of like sitting here and telling the patient, 'Okay, open your chest, breathe,'" she said. "He had a pillow that erected him and opened up his lungs."

To Karan, the difference was clear. But the cancer proved too vicious to overcome and Weiss died six years after the diagnosis. The battle led Karan to think about how hospitals approach illness and healing.