Everyone at the Shenkar School of Engineering and Design was holding their breath. Fashion designer Donna Karan, in Israel earlier this month to receive an honorary fellowship from the school, was examining the work of its industrial design students. Half of the faculty, about 20 students and seven local newspaper photographers were hovering around her. In the back, keeping a watchful eye, was Patti Cohen.

In articles about Karan, Cohen (whose business card identifies her as "executive vice president, global marketing and communications"), is variously referred to as Karan's spokesperson, publicist, hair stylist and marketing director. All true. If the senior assistant to Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" were to grow old in that position, she would look like Cohen: a hot, slim redhead in fancy wooden heels, smartly dressed in the DK label, ready to meet her boss' every whim, constantly text-messaging on her BlackBerry.

Meanwhile, Karan observes the students' designs. She advises one student, who created a kettle, to change the position of the handle so as to facilitate pouring. A few minutes later she jokes with the teacher, saying that, "by the evening the kettle will be changed." She then asks a student who designed a box for chocolates: "Why is everyone here so obsessed with food?" "Obsessed with chocolate and sex," the student says, trying to impress her and grab her attention. "Perfect for you," Patti comments.

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"The same way you feel about chocolate I feel about high heels," says Karan, looking at a display of shoes.

Next year, she announces, she is going to open a new department that combines fashion and industrial design at Parsons School of Design in New York. This is the same institution from which she didn't graduate, where the teachers told her she would never make it as a designer - the same school that recently awarded her an honorary doctorate. Donna Karan is considered to be the most powerful woman in the international fashion industry today, next to Vogue editor Anna Wintour and even more than Miuccia Prada or Jil Sander. Together Donna Karan and DKNY have over 80 stores worldwide. Both fashion lines belong to the LVMH group (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton), which purchased them in 2001 for $250 million. Karan is still chief designer, and although an entire team works under her, she claims to have complete control over and involvement in every detail, giving each item its final approval.

Creativity and kabbala

Donna Karan seems very aware of her position: During the short but intensive day at Shenkar, she gave the same kind of attention to the designs of the students as she did to the subject of Israel's status as a creative leader - or was it spiritual leader? It was hard to say at times. It was obvious, though, that she does not associate Israel with any kind of political statement, but rather with the principles of kabbala (Jewish mysticism), with which she has been engaged during the past few years. The telltale red bracelet is there, on her wrist.

"Where's Ruthie?" she asks Patti, referring to her teacher from the New York kabbala center, who joined her on the trip to Israel, as the entourage rushed to the school's jewelry department. "I left her a message, and she has all our numbers," Patti assures her.

Karan is quite tall, about 5 feet 7 (1.75 meters), but her high-heeled brown sandals - which don't cry out "Donna Karan" - add at least 2 more inches to her height. She's very tanned, perhaps as should be expected of someone who owns a beach house in the tony Hamptons, on eastern Long Island. Her age, almost 60, does not show in her fabulous legs and tremendous energy. The arms are not as shapely, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by that. She's been practicing yoga since the age of 18, and although each of her legs have been implanted with half-a-dozen metal pins, due to a ski accident, she can still lift them above her ears - or so Patti says. Her shoulders are almost always bare; that's her favorite part of her body.

"Every woman should love her shoulders the best," Karan says. "They never gain weight."

In the jewelry department she stops to look at a necklace made of tiny golden safety pins, which triggers a recurring speech about the importance of recycling. But when she asks to see it more closely (and by "see," she always means "touch"), she is warned that the pins are open. This amuses her, as does the fact that she finds most of the designs to be quite creative and imaginative, but not practical and too accessorized. She's a business woman; she automatically wonders whether a particular design has commercial potential. Open safety pins simply don't make the cut.

She gives the students the abbreviated Karan guide to accessories: "A piece of jewelry is also a sculpture and it should flatter the body. It should work well with what you're wearing. Here, take my bag, for example," she says, pointing to her bag, which also accompanies the dress she's wearing in the catalog of the last Donna Karan collection. "It's part of my body, I don't have to think about it. But, of course, that is only my opinion."

She seems to go for a pair of shell-like leather earrings and some over-sized sunglasses. "I love it," she says, looking for a mirror, but settling for her reflection in a TV camera. "I'm obsessed with sunglasses. You should know: This is a huge thing at the moment. Just giving you the FYI [for your information] here." She tries on another pair of glasses, which she doesn't like as much to begin with, but then changes her mind: "Cool! Very, very cool!" Karan says to the student designer, adding that she would like her to work on a project for her. The student almost faints.

Then she suddenly notices a piece of fabric hanging on the wall. She rushes toward it with genuine enthusiasm. Karan loves fabrics; they excite her. She's compelled to feel them. Every piece of cloth she sees she immediately wraps around her wrist, and then tries to see whether it blends with her dress.

"What is this made of?"

"Sponge and metal," the student replies.

"That makes recycling sense," she notes happily.

Love of Lycra

Karan recognizes each and every kind of fabric - touches it, feels it. "If you have a good fabric person, you don't even need to be a designer. Fabric talks. It tells you what to do."

She examines a piece of silver-colored leather, which folds like a piece of plisse. Once again she wraps it around her wrist, like a bracelet.

Now she has arrived at Shenkar's fashion design department. Fourth-year students are on hand. "Did Ruthie call?" Karan presses Patti again. Not yet, it seems. She goes through a student's "design-inspiration" book and sure enough, she stops at a page with a piece of fabric attached to it. She immediately holds it up to her, like a skirt, and offers to buy it. "I'll just give it to you," says the student. Wrong answer. "You don't need to give it to me," she admonishes her. Impractical thinking makes Karan angry.

She moves on to a student who designed a layered dress from burned Lycra. She is amused. "Minimalism just isn't a part of you, ha? You want to go in for the kill." Karan is fascinated by the scorched fabric. "Wow, you really burned this out, honey." She's surprised the piece of material doesn't fall apart. The cloth-wrist ritual repeats itself once more, and she wonders whether there are any larger pieces of this fabric that she can take back home.

Later that day, while speaking before the students, she will try the dress on over her black bodysuit, which made her famous all those years ago ("She has to wear it at all times because wherever we go, she takes off her clothes and tries on stuff," Patti explains). The dress doesn't do her justice, but she seems to be inspired by the fabric, and asks to buy it from the students (Shelly Porat, from the textile department, and Orly Borer, from fashion design), but ends up taking it as a gift. The students are more than happy to give it to Karan, even if it means doing their project again from scratch.

"I think your ideas are brilliant, but I don't know if I see anybody wearing them," Karan comments, and then reconsiders. After all, she continues, they'll have plenty of time to create practical clothes in the future, and as students they should be allowed to enjoy themselves - to go wild. On the other hand, she asks them time and time again to pay attention to the difference between what they design and what they themselves wear.

The next stop is a T-shirt, featuring an early 17th century-like, layered collar, made of faded cotton. "This could be great for DKNY," says Karan. "If I were to assign you to a project, would you be interested? I would like you to handle New York City the same way you handled the army." The student is completely hysterical; her friends hug her as if she were chosen to be Miss America.

"Are you from Ethiopia?" she asks another student. "I love Ethiopia, it's so beautiful. I was just there last summer, and there is a lot of recycling there in the way that people dress."

Karan wonders what on earth makes an Ethiopian girl immigrate to Israel, of all places, at the age of 5. She goes through the student's album, and then notices the thin braids in her hair.

"Do you see this? These are the sort of things I love. I could do a whole collection just around this braid." She can't seem to tear herself away from the Ethiopian student. "I'm hooked on Africa, but also on Israel. Ethiopia is so spiritual, don't you think? Even the streets there are such inspiration, the way people dress ... and you know what I noticed the most there are the eyes, they are so clear; it's as if they are looking right through you. I love Israel and Turkey and stuff like that."

The famous designer recommends, as the bottom line, that students go work in retail. "It is the best school possible," says the woman who, herself, worked at a clothing shop at the age of 14. "Being with the customers, in the dressing room, to see what they like and dislike."

She also repeatedly urges the students to create clothes they themselves would wear, to put them on and also to ask friends to wear them. Walk in them, run, lift your hands, bend down, she exhorts them. See if it really works.

Anna Wintour, Vogue's admired and infamous editor, has said of Karan that women all over America see her as the designer they relate to the most; she makes women feel that she identifies with them, that the wish to dress in an age-appropriate, flattering way is something they have in common. It seems that the fact that Karan really does wear her own clothes contributes to this connection with her clientele, and to the feeling Wintour describes.

Cultural inspiration

Back at Shenkar, the entourage once again rushes after Karan, and almost follows her into the bathroom by mistake. She and Patti come out refreshed. Patti makes sure that Karan redoes her lipstick; Karan asks where Ruthie is.

Prof. Amotz Weinberg, president of Shenkar, welcomes and congratulates Karan on her visit. About 18 months ago she was in Israel on a private visit, related to kabbala. Senior fashion writer Noa Arber heard she was in town, and found out where she was staying. Weinberg also approached the designer then.

He compares his excitement in meeting her to what Karan felt when first meeting her idol - and today close friend - Barbra Streisand: Karan says she could not speak. Overwhelmed, she sat down and asked for a Valium.

A lot of Karan's reactions seem almost automatic; it is as if she has become immune to people seeking to make an impression on her. But when she says Weinberg is a charming man and that she loves the sparkle in his eyes, she sounds pretty sincere.

In answer to questions by reporters, most of which fail to challenge her, she tends to get carried away and to drift back to her favorite subjects, such as recycling, combining fashion and technology, her sources of inspiration. She defines the latter as "cultures," referring to any place which preserves ethnic tradition. She's bored with cities, apparently. They all look the same to her, with the same brands everywhere.

When Karan declaims such truths as "people don't really want to wear very extreme things - they want something they already know, but with a twist" - it is obvious that fashion is part of her genetic makeup: Her father was a tailor, who made men's suits; her mother was a show-room model and later went into fashion marketing. Her stepfather was also in fashion. She herself was born in New York and grew up on Long Island, and was already chief designer for Anne Klein at the age of 26. Her many years in the business have taught her to make adjustments, even if it means compromising on some of her principles. For the DKNY label, she chooses very skinny models, despite the fact that with Donna Karan, she has always insisted on using only such women as Demi Moore and Isabella Rossellini - beautiful, but in no way gaunt.

"I think kids today are skinnier," she comments. "I see my daughter. She's like a toothpick, and I know how much she eats. I think the body must have changed a lot."

You won't get a forceful opinion from her on the role the fashion industry plays in encouraging eating disorders among young people.

"Once the body in the magazines was fuller. Rosemary McGrotha, for example - I could only shoot her from the waist up. But when I started using older models, a lot of fashion editors just didn't get it. My fashion company is a business, and I do want DKNY to speak to young people. My husband was a fine artist. I am a commercial artist."

Life and death

In a different part of Shenkar, there is a retrospective exhibition of Karan's work: Some mannequins are dressed in her designs, a few posters from old campaign ads hang on the walls and a large screen displays videos of her fashion shows. A team from Israel's Channel 2 arrives to conduct an interview. Patti first checks how her boss looks in the monitor, and only when she gives the green light does the interview begin. Not before another "Where's Ruthie?" It seems she's finally on her way.

Karan seems comfortable in front of a camera, surrounded by people. She's in the center of everything. Around her dozens of members of Shenkar's board of governors seem to be trying to reach her, to talk to her.

United States Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones arrives. They speak to each other, whispering. Karan talks with her hand, making gestures that could be interpreted as "let's get this over with," or "I'm done here," or perhaps "This is how you straighten out a tablecloth." Jones addresses the board of governors and other guests, Karan follows with a few words, and after that everyone goes off to the dining room. On the way there, next to a small exhibition of jewelry, she asks again about Ruthie, who is supposed to arrive at any minute now.

Karan arrived in Israel in a private jet furnished with beds. She apparently didn't get much sleep, and now barely gets a chance to eat: Board members keep coming to congratulate her, to shake her hand. She tends to ask people what their Zodiac sign is. One man says that he is a Libra and his partner is Virgo. Like us, says Karan, but the other way around. She always gives credit to her late, second husband Stephen Weiss - Virgo, sculptor-turned-skillful businessman and a life-loving biker with a silver ponytail. In every interview she mentions him as the person who enabled the growth of her company and freed her to be creative. He died six years ago of cancer. So far there has been no "significant other."

"I'm looking for someone who shares my values," she says. "I love bikes. I want an artist, not too old; been there, done that. He should be hot and sexy and young. When you lose your husband to a disease, you're not sure you want someone old again. Someone who can keep up with me, who likes to travel, giving, creative. Polish doesn't interest me in a man."

She speaks about the circle of life and death she has experienced: Her boss and mother-figure, Anne Klein, for whom she worked for over 10 years, died very soon after Karan gave birth to her daughter, Gabrielle, who is 33 today. (Donna was married at the time to her first husband, Mark Karan.) Like Stephen, Anne also died of cancer.

"My life is so predictable, so boring, there are no subtleties," she quips.

"It's hardly sex and drugs and rock 'n roll," adds Patti.

Nice Jewish women aren't supposed to discuss sex; at the very most they are allowed to complain about it when visiting their therapist, one of which Karan sees regularly. Precisely for these moments, it seems, Ruthie exists. Indeed she finally arrives in the dining room, and now there is no more talk of hot guys - only of giving and being thankful, and of Karan's daughter, who should know that not everyone is as blessed as she is. And there is also some discussion about a book, the best of all books, according to Karan. And this is no sketch book - but rather "The Zohar," the most authoritative work there is on kabbala. W