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
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]
Career
In 1969, Kamali opened a boutique with her then-husband Mohammed Houssein Kamali. 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 draw string.[7] Kamali designed the red one-piece bathing suit worn by Farrah Fawcett in the iconic 1976 poster[8] 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.[9] She is one of several designers credited with popularizing the shoulder pad in women's wear in the 1980s[10][11] and played a prominent role in adapting exaggerated shoulder pads to casual clothes at the beginning of the eighties shoulder-pad era in 1978.[12] She reached a peak of fame during the early 1980s[13] 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,[14] a style she had first presented in other fabrics in 1979.[15] Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[16]
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.[17] In 2008, Kamali produced a collection for Walmart.[18]
After completing a generative AI course at MIT in 2023,[19] Kamali trained an AI to produce clothing designs in her style.[20][21]
In 2021, Kamali published a memoir entitled I Am Invincible.[22]
^"Norma Kamali". People. December 27, 1982. Archived from the original on November 23, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
^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.
^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. ISBN978-1-61069-310-3.
^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,...
^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.
^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.
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1980". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 371. ISBN0-670-80172-0. 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.
^Mulvagh, Jane (1988). "1980". Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. London, England: Viking, the Penguin Group. p. 371. ISBN0-670-80172-0. Kenzo, Chloé and others now showed pretty, floral printed-cotton versions of the rah-rah introduced by Kamali and [Perry] Ellis in 1979.
.jpg)
