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Norma Kamali

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Norma Kamali
Born
Norma Arraez

(1945-06-27) June 27, 1945 (age 80)
New York City, U.S.
Alma materFashion Institute of Technology
OccupationFashion designer
Years active1968–present
Websitenormakamali.com
A coat Kamali designed in 2021 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the In America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibition

Norma Kamali (born June 27, 1945)[1] is an American fashion designer and entrepreneur best known for the "Sleeping Bag" Coat, sweats as everyday sportswear, and swimwear. She lives in New York City.[2]

Early life and education

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Norma Arraez was born on June 27, 1945, to Estrella C. Galib Arraez Granofsky and Salvador Mariategui William Arraez, a middle class family residing in Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York City.[1][3] She is of Lebanese and Basque descent.[4] Aspiring to become a painter.[3] Kamali attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and earned a degree in illustration.[3][5] Upon graduation, she worked as a freelance fashion illustrator for a year. She also worked for Northwest Orient Airlines from 1966 to 1967.[6] In an interview, she says that her mother Estrella planted a seed when telling her to become independent and pushed her to make her own cloth early on. [7]

Career

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In 1969, Kamali opened a New York boutique with her then-husband Mohammed Houssein "Eddie" Kamali, concentrating on London-style street looks. In 1974, the couple opened a shop called Kamali on Madison Avenue. After their divorce in 1978, Kamali opened her own independent boutique called OMO Norma Kamali, OMO standing for "on my own."[8]

During the early seventies, she started producing one-piece maillot bathing suits stripped of structuring to achieve a sleek, racy shape on which she altered leg cuts and back cuts to create a great variety of looks, those in glamour fabrics like gold lamé garnering particular attention from fashion-watchers. By the mid-seventies, she was well known for her swimsuits, and the very high leg cuts on some of her swimwear from the second half of the seventies set a trend that lasted through the following decade.[9] Kamali designed the red one-piece bathing suit worn by Farrah Fawcett in the iconic 1976 poster[10] and the bathing suit worn by Whitney Houston on the back cover of her 1985 debut album. Farrah Fawcett's suit was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2011.[11]

She became known for her line of clothing made of real silk parachute material, which included the innovation of being adjustable in length and fit by drawstring, a characteristic feature of the mid-seventies Big Look period.[12]

She is one of several designers credited with popularizing the shoulder pad in women's wear in the 1980s[13] and played a prominent role in adapting exaggerated shoulder pads to casual clothes at the beginning of the eighties shoulder-pad era in 1978.[14]

She reached a peak of fame during the early 1980s[15] with her 1980 "Sweats" collection, a variety of casual garments done in sweatshirt fabric, most famously flounced, hip-yoked miniskirts called rah-rah skirts in the UK,[16] a style she had first presented in other fabrics in 1979.[17] These garments were the first mini-length skirts in ten years to gain widespread public acceptance, repopularizing miniskirts for the eighties.[18] The "Sweats" collection of 1980-81 also finally won the public over to the large shoulder pads that the fashion industry had been trying to get women to wear since 1978, partly by making the pads removable via velcro, the first designer to make prominent use of velcro for this purpose.[19]

Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[20]

Kamali was the first designer to create an online store on eBay.[2] In addition to designing clothing, she has also produced a fitness, health and beauty line.[21] In 2008, Kamali produced a collection for Walmart.[22]

After completing a generative AI course at MIT in 2023,[23] Kamali trained an AI to produce clothing designs in her style.[24][25]

In 2021, Kamali published a memoir entitled I Am Invincible.[26]

Awards and honors

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In 1981, Kamali won a Coty Award, called the "Winnie" but formally titled the American Fashion Critics' Award.[27] She received the CFDA Board of Directors Special Tribute Award in 2005,[2] and was awarded the CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016,[3] which was presented to her by Michael Kors.[28] In 2019, Kamali received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Pioneer Award[29] at the United Nations.

In 2010, Kamali received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, the Fashion Institute of Technology.[30]

Kamali has a plaque on the Fashion Walk of Fame.[22]

Personal life

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In 1968, she married Mohammad "Eddie" Kamali. They divorced in 1977. She got engaged to her longtime partner, Marty Edelman, in 2020.[31]

References

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  1. ^ a b Alford, Holly Price; Stegemeyer, Anne (2014). Who's Who in Fashion. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-60901-969-3.
  2. ^ a b c "Norma Kamali". Council of Fashion Designers of America. Archived from the original on April 29, 2010. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d Anderson, Kristin (June 1, 2016). "Bette Midler, Vera Wang, and More Tell the Story of the Iconic Norma Kamali". Vogue. Archived from the original on January 3, 2019.
  4. ^ Denman, Selina (May 29, 2014). "The designer Norma Kamali talks about her ethical-carpet project as it hits the UAE". The National. Retrieved March 4, 2024.
  5. ^ "Norma Kamali". People. December 27, 1982. Archived from the original on November 23, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  6. ^ Kellogg, Ann T., Amy T. Peterson, Stefani Bay, and Natalie Swindell. "Kamali, Norma". In In an Influential Fashion: An Encyclopedia of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Fashion Designers and Retailers Who Transformed Dress, illustrated by Kamila Dominik, [169]-171. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
  7. ^ Monocle Radio (April 18, 2025). Norma Kamali. Retrieved July 30, 2025 – via YouTube.
  8. ^ Madden, Kathleen (June 1, 1982). "The Kamali Effect". Vogue. 172 (6). New York, NY, USA: The Conde Nast Publications: 193, 271. At nineteen, Norma married Eddie (Mohammed Houssein) Kamali,a student from Iran; and, a year later, they opened a basement boutique on East Fifty-Third Street. They stocked it with kicky 'sixties Carnaby Street London things...[T]he shop moved, in 1974, to a...space on Madison Avenue. It was called Kamali. After the Kamalis divorced, OMO Norma Kamali was born – in 1978.
  9. ^ Madden, Kathleen (June 1, 1982). "The Kamali Effect". Vogue. 172 (6). New York, NY, USA: The Conde Nast Publications: 193, 271. First, there are Kamali bathing suits...In 1972, Kamali first made maillots out of gold lamé...
  10. ^ Dodes, Rachel (June 25, 2009). "Norma Kamali, Designer of Swimsuit from Farrah Fawcett Poster, Remembers the Star". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012. Retrieved February 21, 2012.(subscription required)
  11. ^ Moss, Hilary (February 2, 2011). "Farrah Fawcett's Red Swimsuit Goes To Smithsonian (VIDEO)". Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  12. ^ Jablon, Sara (2015). "Kamali, Norma (1945–)". In F., José Blanco (ed.). Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe [4 volumes]: American Fashion from Head to Toe. ABC-CLIO. p. 175. ISBN 978-1-61069-310-3.
  13. ^ "Index Magazine". Index Magazine. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  14. ^ Duka, John (July 11, 1978). "Norma Kamali is Heading Out on Her Own". The New York Times: C2. Retrieved December 10, 2021. Norma Kamali...has become famous for her parachute dresses, sexy, shirred bathing suits, pegged, draped skirts...and...padded shoulders.
  15. ^ Hyde, Nina (March 25, 1983). "Comfortable Classiness". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 22, 2022. One year ago [1982], all you saw being worn by fashionable women was Norma Kamali.
  16. ^ Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1980". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 371. ISBN 0-670-80172-0. Norma Kamali launched her 'sweats' collection: rah-rah skirts, leggings and jogging suits cut in grey and brightly coloured cotton sweatshirting. The tops often had huge, American-footballer shoulder pads. These low-priced co-ordinates were copied worldwide.
  17. ^ Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1980". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 371. ISBN 0-670-80172-0. Kenzo, Chloé and others now showed pretty, floral printed-cotton versions of the rah-rah introduced by Kamali and [Perry] Ellis in 1979.
  18. ^ Madden, Kathleen (June 1, 1982). "The Kamali Effect". Vogue. 172 (6). New York, NY, USA: The Conde Nast Publications: 271. Short 'rah-rah' skirts...sold out...across the country....'Girls would buy 20 pieces at a time.'...Her rah-rah skirts were 'the first minis, since the early 'seventies, to sell in volume'.
  19. ^ Buck, Genevieve (October 2, 1985). "Shoulders: The Intimate Story". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved April 4, 2022. ...[In] the late `70s...really big shoulders reappeared,...broader than ever. Reactions to the doorway-wide affairs generally ranged from 'not for me' to 'never!'...In the spring of `81, Kamali slipped oversized shoulder pads into vastly oversized sweatshirts in a collection of sportswear that took off overnight and found women, girls and even kids across the country happily looking like female footballers.... Since then, shoulder pads have become a way of life to the fashion-conscious,...
  20. ^ "The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Collections". Metmuseum.org. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  21. ^ post a comment › (June 21, 2011). "Norma Kamali Resort 2012 Collection on Style.com: Runway Review". Style.com. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  22. ^ a b "Sidewalk-Catwalk". Sidewalk-Catwalk. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  23. ^ FEITELBERG, ROSEMARY (September 29, 2023). "Norma Kamali Is Getting Married and Launching a Podcast". Women’s Wear Daily.
  24. ^ Bain, Marc (January 30, 2024). "Can AI Carry On a Designer's Legacy?". Business of Fashion. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  25. ^ Beard, Alison (January 2024). "Life's Work: An Interview with Norma Kamali". Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Publishing. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  26. ^ "Norma Kamali on Commodified Wellness, Sweatpants, and Planning a Wedding at 75". ELLE. February 17, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  27. ^ BERNADINE MORRIS, 1981 COTY WINNERS New York Times, September 26, 1981
  28. ^ 2016 CFDA FASHION AWARDS: Norma Kamali Receives Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award on YouTube
  29. ^ "WEDO Annual Pioneer Awards 2019". Women's Entrepreneurship Day. Archived from the original on December 6, 2019. Retrieved December 6, 2019. Additional WEDO Kamali Normal Kamali profile, accessed January 14, 2020, and archived December 6, 2019.
  30. ^ "Norma Kamali". Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  31. ^ "Designer Norma Kamali Announces Engagement at 75: 'We All Have a Different Timeline'". Peoplemag. Retrieved March 4, 2024.
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