Daily Inspiration Quote by Donna Karan

A lesser designer might treat “power dressing” as armor: shoulder pads, severity, the corporate costume of entry. Donna Karan flips it into something more subversive - not a disguise, but a reveal. “We’ve come a long way” is doing double duty: it nods to feminism’s measurable gains in the workplace while quietly admitting how recently women had to borrow men’s silhouettes to be taken seriously. Her point isn’t that ambition has softened; it’s that the uniform of ambition has finally made room for the body and identity it’s meant to serve.

The slyness sits in “the woman inside us.” Karan isn’t only addressing women; she’s smuggling in a broader claim about gender performance. Power, she implies, was never inherently masculine - it was just styled that way. The phrase suggests an interior self long managed, muted, or edited for public consumption, now allowed to “come through” via design choices that privilege movement, comfort, and sensuality without apologizing for them. It’s an argument against the old bargain: competence in exchange for concealment.

Context matters: Karan rose in late 20th-century New York, when “dress for success” culture treated the office like a stage with strict casting. Her Seven Easy Pieces offered modular, body-aware clothes for real lives - commuting, working, living. This line distills that ethos: the modern power suit isn’t about impersonating authority; it’s about redefining what authority looks like when women stop dressing like guests in someone else’s world.