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
And from that, I said, lesson learned is you have to talk to people in order for people to help you. And so I started to reach out and I was amazed at how many people wanted to help me and they did. And so I borrowed money and I paid everybody back. even when we didn't make that much money, I opened a store and we didn't make that much money. I would give them a little bit.
I remember envelopes, money, sending people letters. Thank you very much. Each week sending something. If I couldn't send something for the week, I would send a note saying, I apologize. And I'm embarrassed that I can't send you something this week, but I would send the note. And I, Remember when I paid everyone, that moment was extraordinary. It was wow.
I'm really free and I'm actually making money and I can buy fabric and I can make these decisions myself. How long did that take Norma? It actually didn't take that long because I got a tremendous amount of publicity going out on my own. And I used, if I was going to use the name Norma Kamali, I had to change it in some way. So I used OMO Norma Kamali on my own, Norma Kamali.
And there were so many articles. And it was a time when women were seeking this freedom, this independence. And the letters I received from women across the country saying, what you've done inspired me. I'm going to do it too. I can do that. And I realized it was that moment in time where my story was very similar. And it was around the same time Cher and Sonny broke up.
And Cher was a customer of mine. And she... I have a telegram. I still have a telegram from her congratulating me for leaving Eddie. And it was her experience, too, at that time. So... I think wherever women saw that this could happen, that you could actually do something without a man being in control of it, was very inspiring for women.
It actually started the first week we were in business in the basement. I have no real idea why. It was famous men and women. And at the time, they didn't have stylists shopping for them. Everybody shopped for themselves. And so I got to meet a lot of these people who... were looking to create their own style. Don't forget, the 70s, nobody was styling Jimi Hendrix.
Nobody was styling Cher, other than her costumes for her show. She was styling herself. Bianca Jagger, styling herself. Everybody was. And I had these great customers. I mean, I remember...
making every color feather jacket you could imagine for Sly from Sly and the Family Stone, if anybody remembers who he is, and making clothes for all of these great people who were famous and doing great things. And I've never given free clothes to anybody to wear my clothes. And so if people want them, they're obviously buying them and paying for them.
So I have no real understanding of why that is and why it still continues. But I'm very complimented by it. But I'm also complimented by seeing social media, by the way, offers a great... opportunity for designers. And for me, we have a hashtag, NKMyWay, and my customers around the world are the coolest women who style themselves in the most amazing ways.
They take amazing photographs that they are in countries that you would never expect. or they're traveling to countries, and we are in awe of what we see. And that is the biggest compliment of all. And so I love that celebrities of the time, of the moment, are wearing my clothes. And it keeps going generationally. Sabrina Carpenter is wearing my clothes. It's an interesting phenomena, right?
Raquel Welch. I did every outfit she ever wore to the Oscars or any of those. Working with her one-on-one... With this body that's the most spectacular body, this gorgeous human being who focused on her body, her face, herself. And so what was designed, we worked together on them. So if you have somebody like that and then people today, it's an amazing experience.
phenomena to me that that happens but i have nothing to do with it i'm not giving clothes away i'm not paying people to come to support me it's really a beautiful thank you that i appreciate more than anything
How did you learn? Well, don't forget the airlines I was selling for four years. I was selling tours to the Orient, round-the-world trips, where I would learn if you liked oranges, I would find out everything you liked. So every time you were at a new hotel room, there would be oranges there. So I learned from the airlines.
And I don't know if it's Lebanese people are born with the selling gene, but I'm Lebanese. And I think we just do it because that's somewhere it's streaming in our blood.
Negotiate. Right. But also, the idea of selling wholesale is very different from retail. So I remember... We had the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, and it was Christie Brinkley on the cover, and Francesco Scavullo took the picture. And Cosmo was the magazine du jour for this girl, this feminine kind of power that was happening. Helen Gurley Brown was writing all these provocative stories
articles about masturbation and everything else. And the cover was the cover to get more than Vogue, more than anything. And here I have the cover of Cosmo on Christie Brinkley, who nobody knew. And this gorgeous girl shows up out of nowhere wearing one of my swimsuits. And at the time, swimwear was, was more of a two-piece conversation from the waist down.
Some suits were lower rise, but mostly more covered and many prints, not so much solid suits. And I made this bikini that had two triangles, a small bottom with strings that would wrap around your body. And it just pushed me into the wholesale world. And in order to produce the amount of swimsuits we needed to produce, it was bigger in numbers. So we decided to try to sell them wholesale.
So we got a model. And we invited buyers up. And I remember when Bloomingdale's came up, I had the swimsuit, and nobody had seen swimsuits like this before. And I had a group of swimsuits, and I was showing some of the swimsuits over jeans and
And they came up, they sat down, they didn't take off their coats, and they're looking at this model that I have, modeling the suits, and they just get up and walk out. And I thought, oh, this wholesale thing is really different. They don't say goodbye. They don't take their coats off. I just thought this was the way it was done.
I didn't realize that they were horrified by what they saw, and they just walked out. I remember years later, I was in a license negotiation and the buyer, our buyer from that group was at the meeting and it was a big table of people. And she was part of the team that was trying to get me to sign a license with this company. And I'm looking at her and she said, oh, hi, do you remember me?
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