THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY MADDRY
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
IF YOU HAPPENED to go to Kellam High School a few years back and were wondering what happened to that misfit Donwan Harrell, who sported non-conformist hair and odd clothes that he made himself . . . he's doing very well, thank you.
Certainly, Donwan no longer worries about the jibes he once got for spending so much time at home sewing with his mother's Singer sewing machine.
Donwan is now one of the 10 top designers for Nike, the largest maker of athletic sportswear in the world.
He has a large office with a huge window overlooking Nike's campus-like headquarters in Portland, Ore. He sometimes turns from his computer to stare through it while he wonders how he has come so far so fast, his career curving upward in a hurry, like Nike's logo - the Swoosh.
His mom says there were certain signs and portents.
``When Donwan was just a kid, we'd go shopping in the Virginia Beach malls, and he wouldn't let me buy him anything that didn't have style and wasn't of the highest quality,'' Veronica Harrell said.
She sighed and added: ``Yes, it was expensive. He'd pick out shoes that cost twice as much as mine.''
Donwan's mother makes and designs her own clothes, and when her boys, Emmett and Donwan, were growing up, they spent a lot of time in her sewing room with its industrial sewing machine and cutting board.
Their neighborhood in Princess Anne Plaza didn't have many young people in it, Donwan's mother recalled, so the boys would sit around the house watching her sew or go down to the rec center for exercise.
When they were 8 and 10 years old, mom taught them how to sew. By the time Donwan was a student at Kellam, he was making his own clothes.
``That was when baggy shorts were popular,'' said his mother.
Donwan, an excellent student, began to think seriously about his future.
``He told me he wanted to make money, and I told him the ways I knew to do it. One was to be a carpenter - Donwan's father, Roy, is a master carpenter. Or a plumber. I also told him cooks make money, because people have to eat. And I said that people will also have to wear clothes, so designing clothes was a way to make money.''
Donwan wasn't interested in being a chef, and plumbing or carpentry looked like the kind of work that would be hard on one of his own-design suits or baggy pants.
``I don't think people in high school thought I had much of a future, because I was a non-conformist and dressed like a punk or Deadhead,'' Donwan recalled. ``About every day, someone would call me aside and ask if I had any respect for myself at all and if so why was I dressing like I did.''
By the time Donwan enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, he had begun to use a sketch pad, drawing clothing designs. He later graduated to water color renderings.
A superior student, he was allowed to skip his first year at VCU and began to work seriously on clothes. He became a legend at the school of fashion, twice winning free trips to Paris and representing the United States in the International Air France Student Fashion Designer Competition.
Competitors in the contest were given individual assignments to challenge their creativity. Donwan was asked to design an outfit that Grace Jones might wear during an archery competition. His winning 1990 design was a flared wool coat dress with a hood over an organza body suit. For dramatic effect, the hood was pierced by a wool arrow.
After graduating from VCU, Donwan headed straight as an arrow for the Big Apple.
One morning, he knocked on the door of Robert Stock, whose clothing line grosses $50 million annually.
``I had no experience but carried a lot of design sketches with me from pen and ink to watercolors,'' Donwan recalled.
Stock took one look at the sketches and hired him the same day.
Within a year, Donwan was made the head designer for the company.
``My office was in the Empire State Building and gave me a nice view of the city,'' he said.
New York had its up and down sides. He was making big bucks but lived in Brooklyn, where the living wasn't easy. ``There were little things,'' he said. ``My car was stolen. Then one morning they found a murdered body in the back yard of a house next to mine.''
One of the positives about New York was that it allowed him to date Karen Causey, his old girlfriend from Kellam High days, who now taught dancing in New Jersey. They had shared an interest in the arts since their days together at the Governor's Magnet School in Virginia. They married about a year ago.
Donwan said that because he and Karen preferred a more laid-back atmosphere outside New York, he asked an employment head hunter to see what was out there for him.
``He got in touch with Nike,'' Donwan recalled. ``Nike asked me to mail them some work that would show where Nike sportswear should be by the year 2000.''
They phoned and offered Donwan a job the same day they received his designs.
That was a little over a year ago.
Donwan believes designing Nike sportswear offers the best use of his highly creative talent, because the company is willing to try new approaches to design and color.
Nike also allows Donwan to travel a lot, so that he can pick up ideas for foreign markets. He's already been to Indonesia and Tawian.
His mother says that Nike always provides her son with first-class air transportation on his trips. Donwan tends to dress casually in first class and wears his hair in dreadlocks.
She says her son is a victim of racial stereotyping. ``He gets a lot of stares from businessmen,'' who believe that he may have stolen a credit card or maybe hubcaps to finance his expensive trips, she said.
``He got that stare from a businessman on a recent flight,'' she said. ``Then he asked what Donwan did. When he learned that Donwan has met all the major sports stars, including Michael Jordan, he wanted to know all about them. He was still following Donwan when they left the airline terminal.''
Donwan will be traveling again in March, when he and Karen move to Hong Kong for a two-year stay. Donwan will be studying the Asian market for Nike and designing activewear that reflects Oriental preferences.
And, he says, ``making a ton of money.''
Nike is generous. ``We're renting a house atop a tall hill overlooking Hong Kong,'' Donwan said. ``I'm sure it's nice. The rent is over $7,000 a month.''
In the meantime, he's designing sportswear for Nike that will be presented in the spring of 1997. Stuff everybody will be wearing, including the ones who made fun of him in the halls of Kellam High . . . if they can afford it.
Just do it, Nike says in its commercials. Sounds as though Donwan Harrell, at just 25, did. ILLUSTRATION: Family color photo
At 25, Donwan Harrell is a top designer for Nike.
by CNB