Donna Karan is part of the social fabric of New York - working in the great tradition of American sportswear, her designs have always been intended to make the lives of the women who wear them more simple. So it was with her revolutionary 'seven easy pieces' collection in the Eighties, a range of garments that worked together to provide a coherent wardrobe solution from day to night, childcare to charity gala.

As well as a democratic designer, Karan is also - famously - a designer who is a Democrat. So, having sorted out the sartorial troubles of New Yorkers so efficiently, Karan has in recent years turned her eye further afield to others who need her support - namely her Urban Zen Foundation, which works to support local communities and charitable causes. Her involvement in Haiti is well-documented and her artisanal collaboration with the craftsmen and women of that nation was key to the spring 2014 collection she presented today.

Since starting that initiative, Karan has incorporated more and more the skills and labours of those she is mentoring in Haiti, and tooled leather bags, low-slung Masai belts and wood-cut necklaces were proof of that in today's collection.

There was an earthy, exotic, feel to simply cut, flowing silk pieces, and the warm palette of ochre, sand and burnt sienna (the initial phase was an icy conflower blue) that was born out on trademark asymmetrical draped silks, and billowing wraps, still just a uptown luxe as ever, but styled to remind her audience that Karan is a designer who has simplicity and ease at the forefront of her mind.

There were safari references too in familiar waterfall leathers, khaki separates and a luxe take on cheesecloth (and finest watered silk, of couse) shirting that seemed inspired by the 'boubou' dress of Western Africa. Patterns framing hems of fluid, square-cut jackets and full but cropped dirndl skirts owed much to hand-dyed and printed batik, bogolan and thioup designs.

Fashion shorthand for this aesthetic is 'tribal', but that seems at once reductive and far too broad. What Karan seemed to convey in this collection was the vastness of design, that her own signatures could fall so easily into territory that felt so far from New York, both its catwalks and its commerce. Naming her collection 'urban culture', Karan seemed to imply that there is no such thing: that urban is what you make it, and if you can do so while broadening your horizons (not an easy thing in a city that often feels so insular, both literally and metaphorically) then that's something to be celebrated.

Click the gallery to view every look from the Donna Karan New York spring 2014 collection