Norma Kamali
speaker
117 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Norma Kamali’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
He had three brothers and a sister. He was the youngest. He went to boarding school in England, and then he came to the U.S. and was going to Columbia. And He was very Western because he spent more time outside of Iran than he actually did in Iran. I love to dance, which is why I keep mentioning clubs, because at that point in my life, no matter what was going on, I was going out dancing.
That was it. And I might add, I'd never taken, I still have not taken a drug. I don't drink alcohol. And I would just dance and drink water and be happier than anybody. So there was a friend of mine was the first person
DJ to ever play records in a club and it was a small club and he invited me he said I'm gonna be playing records at this club and there's dancing and I said records you know like records really you're gonna do that and he said yes it's gonna be great so of course I went and And there was dance contests were very popular then. So they were having a dance contest.
And he said to me, I know you can win this dance contest. And I have a guy that you will dance with. And the two of you will win the dance contest. I said, cool. How much? He said, $500. I said, okay, let's do it. So he introduced me to Eddie, which is the name everybody used for dance. Eddie Kamali. And we never danced together.
And we just started dancing and then we were like, okay, we got this. And we won. So this was now a reason for us to be together. And of course, get married. And he was a student and trying to get through college. And of course, there was a lot of the disruption now is starting in Iran. And there are these two factions of Iranian students, some pro-Shah, some anti-Shah.
So there was a lot of turmoil going on. But there was also a lot of drugs and a lot of partying and all of that. And what happened was our paths started going in different directions. And the more successful the business was, the less I wanted to go out and dance, because I was sewing till 3 in the morning. And I much preferred to do that than to dance.
I mean, I still love to dance, but you end up with different priorities. And he still wanted to dance and continued to do so. And we just really had different priorities. And I believe strongly that my determination and the recognition, nobody knew me because he was in the store and I was always in the sample room. Nobody knew what I looked like. They didn't know anything about me, really.
So I think what happened was he started to be more social and I started to become more and more involved in designing and learning how to make patterns, learning how to run a company. And I was just so thrilled by the fact that I could see who I was supposed to be and what that meant.
And I'd say, oh my God, Eddie. How could you do that? And he'd say, because it's worth $2,000. And of course, he'd take the skirt into the store and sell it in about 20 minutes. And he was a very big advocate for what I was doing until I think he felt my independence. might be a problem for him. And so he controlled the money, which is what men did at the time.
Men controlled the money, men ran businesses, women didn't do that, right? And so I believed that too. And then finally, I think because he'd been dating the sales girl and I'd fired her several times and he rehired her several times. And when she came in to tell me that she was going to start designing and she had some ideas of what she wanted to design, I said, oh, okay.
And I packed up my things and I walked out and that was it. And so she said, Just like the guy with the tuna fish sandwich is an important person in my success because both of them forced me to do something I never thought I would be able to do, no matter how difficult it was becoming with Eddie, no matter how I knew he was doing all of these things. I knew he was taking drugs.
I knew he was spending all the money. the fabric on these things. I couldn't imagine leaving my things. I had $98 to my name. How could you leave with $98? And at that point, we'd separated. I had an apartment. I had a mattress. I didn't even have curtains. I didn't have anything, but I had this feeling that... something good was going to happen. And I had no reason to believe that.
I had zero reason. And nobody knew me.
Oh, half of the business. Are you kidding? He kept changing. First of all. I never had half of the business. He always had more of it because he was the man. I can't explain to you, but that was the way it was. And I accepted it because that's the way it was. It was the way women were trained to believe, and I was trained to believe that he could probably run the business better than I could.
And I had no idea why because I saw my mother handle money very well, but... It was also a partnership, so I accepted the role I had. And I have to say, that girl is so responsible for my freedom as a person, my awareness of my skills, skills I never thought I had. And I think... There was a point later on where she tried to get in touch with me.
She had gone through AA, or I wasn't sure it was drugs or alcohol. And I think there's one of the steps is to ask for forgiveness. And she wanted to do that. And I told her she didn't have to, that she was an important factor in my success. And I would always be grateful for the role she paid, even though she misunderstood what I was talking about.
So one of the things that is really important, I think, for people to know is the relationship was very abusive. I mean, he never touched me, but it was verbally abusive. It was trying to make me fearful. And that abuse, I would never talk about. My mother wasn't speaking to me because I got married so young. She didn't speak to me for a long time. She was very upset with me.
And I didn't have anybody to confide in. And so I had to live with this fear secret about my life. And so I didn't have a confidant. I didn't have somebody to say, you shouldn't be doing this or try something else. So at that point, again, another one of these universe things, there was an editor who had been trying to make an appointment with me, a fashion editor, to talk to me.
She heard that I was the designer. And nobody had ever wanted to speak with me. They spoke with Eddie. We had a date set where we were gonna have lunch. And it was the day after I left the company And my face was swollen from crying. And I thought, I don't know how to get in touch with this woman. I didn't have her telephone number. It was at work.
And so I just met her at the restaurant, looking like I'd just gotten beaten up. And it was a mess. And she said, what happened to you? And I just told her everything. And I felt so vulnerable. And I'd never, ever tell anybody anything. I mean, it was just not what you did. And she said, I'm going to help you. And so she started to help me find help. people to help me.
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