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Episode: Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali (2021)

Author: Guy Raz | Wondery
Duration: 01:29:12

Episode Shownotes

When Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration in the 1960s, she never expected to become a designer. So when a job as an airline clerk came along, she was glad to accept it—along with the perk of dirt-cheap flights from New York to London. On those weekend trips abroad, she discovered

fashion that was exuberant and eye-catching, so she started loading her suitcase with clothing to sell in the U.S. By the 1970s, she was designing her own pieces out of a shop in New York; soon she was selling them to celebrities like Cher and Bette Midler. Today, after more than 50 years in the fashion industry, Norma Kamali is known for iconic designs like the sleeping bag coat, and the bold red bathing suit popularized by Farah Fawcett.This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [email protected] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode of 'How I Built This,' fashion designer Norma Kamali discusses her unconventional journey into the fashion industry, starting from her early experiences in fashion illustration to becoming a celebrated designer known for innovative pieces like the sleeping bag coat and distinctive swimwear. She reflects on her challenges in a male-dominated industry, the cultural shifts that influenced her designs, and her commitment to creativity, comfort, and resilience amidst personal and professional hurdles. Kamali's story underscores the evolution of American fashion and the importance of authenticity and entrepreneurial spirit in building a successful brand.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali (2021)) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
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00:02:19 Speaker_03
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00:03:16 Speaker_03
For more information, please visit HelloLingo.com slash US. Hey everyone, it's Guy here. So this week we're pulling one from our archives. It's an episode with Norma Kamali, the legendary and iconic fashion designer.

00:03:37 Speaker_03
So iconic, in fact, that recently she's been building an AI model of herself with the hope that her team can use it in the future to create new Norma Kamali designs based on her aesthetic.

00:03:50 Speaker_03
Also, if you want to hear more from Norma, she came back on the show a few weeks ago, this time on the advice line. So you can scroll back in the podcast queue to hear her give advice to up and coming entrepreneurs.

00:04:00 Speaker_03
It's another super fun conversation, but this episode will blow your mind. It is an epic tale. It is a hero's journey. Here's her first appearance on how I built this from 2021.

00:04:17 Speaker_04
Well, I started to make some things, and I would put them in the store to see how they would do, and they would do really well.

00:04:28 Speaker_04
And so the majority of the stock slowly became my designs, and I had a full page in Vogue, and I had a good-sized page in Bazaar, and that was beyond Yeah belief because I thought somebody is gonna find me out.

00:04:49 Speaker_04
I don't know what I'm doing Yeah, and I have a full page and in vogue and bizarre. This is nuts. Like I don't have a clue. I

00:05:06 Speaker_03
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

00:05:17 Speaker_03
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Norma Kamali built a 50-year career around hot pants, sleeping bag coats, and a Farrah Fawcett swimsuit, and helped usher in the era of American fashion design.

00:05:41 Speaker_03
Starting a brand and then scaling it fast is hard. The glasses company Warby Parker was founded in 2010, and within five years, it was valued at over a billion dollars.

00:05:55 Speaker_03
The suitcase maker Away was launched in 2015, and by 2019, investors valued it at $1.4 billion. Both incredible achievements and both incredibly rare achievements.

00:06:11 Speaker_03
But what's just as hard, maybe even harder, is to build a brand that endures, that lasts a long time. Think Dell Computers and Southwest Airlines, or even Starbucks and Burton Snowboards. All stories we've told on the show. And this raises a question.

00:06:30 Speaker_03
What does it take to last? To build something that can withstand changes in culture, or in technology, or in lifestyle? Well, in many ways, our story today answers that question. Because fashion designer Norma Kamali figured it out.

00:06:48 Speaker_03
She's been able to build a brand that your mom might have worn and that you'd want to wear too. She's probably best known for creating the sleeping bag coat, but also helping to popularize hot pants, shoulder pads for women,

00:07:03 Speaker_03
the all-in-one dress, and for designing the iconic red bathing suit made famous by supermodel Farrah Fawcett, a piece that is actually in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

00:07:17 Speaker_03
But this isn't just a story about someone with incredible staying power as a fashion designer. This is, you could argue, the story of modern American fashion design. Because back before, say, the 1960s, design, for the most part, happened in Europe.

00:07:36 Speaker_03
To wear something fancy usually meant wearing Hermes or Chanel or Christian Dior, not Donna Karan or Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein. And Norma Kamali was in the vanguard of young designers who changed all of that.

00:07:51 Speaker_03
She grew up in the 1950s in Manhattan in an immigrant neighborhood called Yorkville. Her mother was Lebanese and her father was Basque. When Norma was little, her parents split up, and when she was 13, both her father and her stepfather died.

00:08:06 Speaker_03
So Norma was mainly raised by her mom, who, according to Norma, was an incredibly creative person.

00:08:14 Speaker_04
My mother always had an easel with oil paints where she was in the middle of an oil painting while she was cooking some incredible dish that she just created.

00:08:28 Speaker_04
She made costumes for the plays that we had in the neighborhood for all the kids, but beautiful research costumes. And so I thought that that's what everybody does. And so I was drawing very early.

00:08:45 Speaker_04
I was doing creative things for as long as I can remember. And it was great satisfaction for me.

00:08:56 Speaker_03
And did you have easels and canvases all over your house? And were you constantly painting?

00:09:02 Speaker_04
Actually, no, because the house was about two feet by three feet. So there was just enough space, let's say, really tiny space. So in this neighborhood, we had a community house that we would go to after school.

00:09:21 Speaker_04
And that's where I did a lot of painting. And then I enjoyed sitting by the river and sketching. It was such a happy place to just see a beautiful view and being able to sketch it.

00:09:38 Speaker_03
But when it came time to go to college, you didn't go to art school. Instead, you wound up getting a scholarship to FIT, which is the Fashion Institute of Technology, right?

00:09:50 Speaker_04
Yeah, I decided on FIT because my mother was very clear that she didn't think painting was actually going to help me pay the rent because she wanted me to know that she was not going to help me pay the rent.

00:10:07 Speaker_04
So I went to FIT to see where that would take me. But you have to know that I hated fashion because it was Mad Men time, right? That girdles, garter belts, cone bras, the whole thing. And everything was matchy.

00:10:29 Speaker_03
This was the early, this is like the early 60s.

00:10:31 Speaker_04
Yeah. Yeah. And I did not like that at all. I found it very restricting. And I was obsessed with vintage films from the 30s and 40s. So I was already going into these sort of secondhand stores. They weren't called

00:10:50 Speaker_04
vintage stores at the time right and I would find these clothes and wear them and I was just off the grid like nobody got me and I Didn't study fashion.

00:11:04 Speaker_04
I didn't study pattern making I studied fashion illustration with and And this was at the time there were actual Jobs that you could get in fashion illustration now. I mean people

00:11:19 Speaker_04
I probably don't even know what that means as far as an advertising style.

00:11:26 Speaker_03
So you studied fashion illustration, which is basically drawing outfits on models.

00:11:32 Speaker_04
On models, yeah. And I was able to really study anatomy in a big way. I used to take a lot of courses on anatomy outside of FIT. And from that, I really understanding the body, the movement of the body, the muscle over the bone and the skin over.

00:11:54 Speaker_04
So it all comes together.

00:11:57 Speaker_03
Yeah. And were you an ambitious student? Did you think, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to become a fashion designer. I'm going to make a name for myself.

00:12:06 Speaker_04
No. First of all, let's put this in perspective of the early 60s. It wasn't until the 70s that being a designer in a design house was an American concept, right?

00:12:23 Speaker_04
So the jobs that you would get in the 60s would be manufacturers who knocked off European fashion. Even the department stores at the time would copy the collections and put them under their store brand.

00:12:41 Speaker_04
So if you look at vintage clothes, you'll see in a lot of the labels that the store that carried them, not necessarily the manufacturer or the designer, because that was the way it was done. So the store was really the brand. And I want to add to that,

00:13:01 Speaker_04
Women in the workplace in the 60s, think Mad Men again, most of the women were secretaries, assistants, had those kinds of jobs.

00:13:14 Speaker_04
So I just thought if I can get a fashion illustration job at a company or at a newspaper or a magazine, that would be fine. I would be happy with that. And so my first job interview was in the Garment Center at a manufacturer.

00:13:35 Speaker_04
Unfortunately, it was a difficult experience. It was an objectifying experience.

00:13:43 Speaker_03
When you went in for an interview?

00:13:45 Speaker_04
Yeah. So I, I was very happy with my portfolio. I felt very good about it.

00:13:52 Speaker_03
This is your portfolio of your illustrations.

00:13:56 Speaker_04
Yes, yes. So I was so excited to be graduating and hopefully get this job. And I walk in and he's got his feet up on his desk. He's eating.

00:14:11 Speaker_04
a tuna sandwich, and he tells me to put my portfolio down, and I was wearing a little black dress below my knee, low pumps, my hair was back in a bun, I was very low-key, and he said to me, come here and turn around for me.

00:14:33 Speaker_04
And there was this white noise, and I thought, what? What does that mean? And he's the power in the room, and I hear my mother's voice saying, you better get this job. You better get a job. And so I turned around, and I

00:14:52 Speaker_04
Just was so embarrassed and humiliated and I ran out of the office I grabbed my portfolio and I remember my portfolio tearing up my stockings and my and I'm clip-clopping on my

00:15:08 Speaker_04
Pumps and I'm feeling and crying and so Devastated so when I got home my mother said well, did you get the job?

00:15:18 Speaker_04
and I said no, I didn't get it and I Got a New York Times, which is where they had a big section for Jobs that were available and I saw a job on at an airline, and at the time, Pan Am, TWA, all of these airlines were the Apple of the time, right?

00:15:42 Speaker_04
Those were the jobs you wanted. And so I, of course, didn't want to be a stewardess, and I had zero office skills. But I went for the job because I thought, I want to travel. That's what I want to do. I want to see the world. I don't want to do this.

00:16:01 Speaker_04
And so I went for the job and, shockingly, I got it. And the next thing I know, I'm working at a UNIVAC computer in the 60s. Besides education, airlines were the first ones to actually commercially use computers.

00:16:21 Speaker_03
And so what was your, you were hired by Northwest?

00:16:28 Speaker_04
Northwest Orient Airlines in the office at Penn Plaza, yeah.

00:16:32 Speaker_03
And as what was your official job?

00:16:35 Speaker_04
So I was a reservations specialist and basically a clerk and I worked in this big room with desks all in a row facing a big

00:16:51 Speaker_04
glassed-in walled office and every single call was monitored and people were in there with headphones listening to how we handle our calls.

00:17:04 Speaker_03
People call up and like if they want to book a ticket that you would be the person that they talk to.

00:17:09 Speaker_04
Right. I might, I was agent 1006. I still remember it. And it was Northeast Orient Airlines. May I help you? I mean, I'm still in my, you know.

00:17:21 Speaker_03
So when you worked for Northwest Orient Airlines, which became, eventually became Northwestern and now is no longer exists, part of it was a merger with Delta. Did you get discounts on travel?

00:17:34 Speaker_04
Yes. And that was the reason I wanted to work at an airline. So, uh, the discount to travel round trip to London was $29. Wow.

00:17:46 Speaker_03
From New York to London for 29 bucks.

00:17:48 Speaker_04
Yes, sir. And I, every weekend I would leave Thursday night and come back Monday. Wow.

00:17:55 Speaker_03
That was like the glamor, the height of glamor travel.

00:17:59 Speaker_04
Yeah, and everybody dressed to travel. Yeah.

00:18:04 Speaker_03
So you were going back and forth to London in the mid-60s and just hanging out in London?

00:18:11 Speaker_04
So my first trip, I did a stop first in Paris. I met my girlfriend in Paris that was at FIT with me. And we met in the lobby of her hotel.

00:18:26 Speaker_04
and I was waiting for her and at the same time there was a rock group from London in the lobby and so they thought I was French and they were talking about me and I was really trying not to divulge that I knew what they were talking about and so my friend Betsy came and of course we see each other and we're screaming and they started laughing and they said, oh so you're an American.

00:18:52 Speaker_04
And it was the Spencer Davis group, I don't know if you know who they are. You know the song, I'm a man, I'm a man, yes I am.

00:19:02 Speaker_03
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I got you, okay.

00:19:04 Speaker_04
And they said when you guys come back to London, there's a club called the Speakeasy and we'll get you in. So we said, sure. And when we got back to London, we of course went to the speakeasy on Margaret street.

00:19:22 Speaker_04
And this was this club, this private club where all of the rock people, the, everybody, um, I got to meet Jimi Hendrix and everybody.

00:19:35 Speaker_03
Yeah. Really like in the gut got into the scene. Like this is like swinging sixties, Carnaby street, London.

00:19:41 Speaker_04
Jeff Beck, yeah. Jeff Beck was a really good friend. And at this club, I met these two guys who were really nice. And one of them said, you're going to really get along with my girlfriend really well. Tomorrow, come meet us at our shop.

00:19:59 Speaker_04
And so they had a shop. And the Stones were partners with them in the shop.

00:20:05 Speaker_03
Where was the shop?

00:20:06 Speaker_04
On King's Road, it was one of the- On King's Road in Chelsea, okay. A friend of mine at the airline suggested I stay at a boarding house off King's Road for $6 a night. So I did.

00:20:18 Speaker_04
And so this was when King's Road was all gray, except for a few stores that just burst color up the walls outside. And Dandy's, which was the name of the shop, was one of those stores.

00:20:33 Speaker_03
Wow. And what did the store sell?

00:20:35 Speaker_04
They had men's clothes, women's clothes. They had a motorcycle in the store and a car engine. And I actually have a photo of four of us outside on Kings Road.

00:20:51 Speaker_04
Parry Match came and did a color double page spread of all of us dressed in the clothes from Dandy's. And it's hysterical. It looks like it's a costume party, but it wasn't. It wasn't a costume party.

00:21:05 Speaker_04
It was what we were really wearing and the clothes were great.

00:21:09 Speaker_03
And by the way, this is a time, if I'm not mistaken, when London was like, it was the center, like the cultural center of the Western world.

00:21:18 Speaker_03
I mean, of course, you know, there were massive, like student demonstrations were beginning in Berkeley and in New York City and in Paris, but like culturally, right, London was Carnaby Street and the Stones and the Beatles. Everything.

00:21:32 Speaker_03
And people were wearing things that you were not seeing in New York.

00:21:36 Speaker_04
Right. Completely different. I connected right away with it. I felt that that was where my soul was. I was totally comfortable with it. So when I talk about London,

00:21:49 Speaker_04
being grey, you think of these tweed coats and the hats and the grey London, and this colour bursting, literally bursting, and the music blaring out of the stores. It was art in expression in every way that you could think of. Film, music,

00:22:10 Speaker_04
fashion for sure. So much had just flipped and went against the grain of anything that had happened before. So when I would come back from London with my skirt a very short mini, nobody had been wearing mini skirts before that.

00:22:32 Speaker_04
So when I came back and I would walk in the street with a mini skirt, cars would screech to a halt. It was shocking.

00:22:42 Speaker_04
And people would say the most ridiculous things like, you know, either that you're a prostitute or what do you, but the shock of showing your knees

00:22:54 Speaker_03
And that was completely like radical when you would come back to New York?

00:22:57 Speaker_04
Radical. Radical.

00:23:02 Speaker_03
I guess around this time you this is sort of the mid mid 60s. You met a guy named Eddie Kamali who would go on to be your husband. How did you meet him?

00:23:16 Speaker_04
His name was Mohammed Hossain Kamali and his spoken name was Mansoor and some of his friends would call him Eddie. And I love to dance and there was a club that opened that was a very small club and it turned out that I knew the DJ.

00:23:38 Speaker_04
And he was like, oh, mom, so glad you came. And he said, they're going to have dance contests here, and I think you should enter the dance contest. And I was like, I don't know.

00:23:49 Speaker_04
And he said, yeah, and I know a guy that's a really good dancer that you should dance with, and they have prize money that you could win. So he introduced me to Eddie Kamali. And of course, we won the dance contest.

00:24:06 Speaker_04
So that in itself is enough reason to get married at 19.

00:24:13 Speaker_03
Oh God, Norma, my mom also got married at 19, which was not unusual. And so 19 years old, and I'm, cause I'm thinking, Norma, what are you thinking? But that was, right? So you were 19, you're married.

00:24:26 Speaker_03
So when you, so you and Eddie were married when all, when you were going back and forth to London.

00:24:31 Speaker_04
Yeah. Yeah.

00:24:32 Speaker_03
And was he coming with you or are you going by yourself?

00:24:34 Speaker_04
No, he was a student here. He was studying economics. He was one of a flood of Iranian students that came during the Shah's time. Yeah.

00:24:46 Speaker_04
So I would go to London and it was pretty early on that I started to bring back clothes for friends of mine who were saying, Oh, you've got to get me this, this.

00:24:58 Speaker_04
And so I would bring back these little dresses from, you know, uh, Biba and bus stop and all of those shops in the, in the garment bag. And I got those with the sort of.

00:25:11 Speaker_04
expandable sides, and I literally, it would be like I was carrying a body through my carry-on.

00:25:19 Speaker_03
You were just packing your suitcase and bringing stuff back so you didn't have to pay shipping costs.

00:25:23 Speaker_04
I mean, I just didn't know better that you should, I mean, I was just, oh, this sounds good, and I just did it. And I did that for a very, I mean, four years.

00:25:35 Speaker_03
Meantime, you're still working for the airline, right?

00:25:38 Speaker_04
Yes, I'm working for the airlines and bringing clothes back. Yeah.

00:25:42 Speaker_03
This is around like 1968, I guess. And that year you would go on to open a store selling clothes. But how did you connect the dots? I mean, you're obviously bringing clothes back for friends.

00:25:56 Speaker_03
But at what point did you say, you know what, I should actually open a shop and sell this stuff?

00:26:01 Speaker_04
Well, it was obvious to me that more and more people were asking me to bring clothes back. And I thought, I don't know, maybe this is a good idea. And having a shop would sort of solidify what I'm doing.

00:26:20 Speaker_04
It would make it have a purpose, not to just be sort of like a cattle car coming back and forth with clothes. And the good news was because Eddie was a student, he would have time off that he could work in the store and sell.

00:26:41 Speaker_04
And he was great at selling, very charming. And while I was at the airlines, he was selling the clothes in the store.

00:26:51 Speaker_03
I mean, this is 1968, so it's not New York today because New York real estate today is – it's almost impossible for the average person to just rent a place in New York. But how realistic – I mean, you were a reservations clerk.

00:27:02 Speaker_03
How were you able to rent a space in New York City? Was it just cheap?

00:27:07 Speaker_04
Well, it was $285 a month. Nice. It was a basement. It was literally 9 by 16.

00:27:16 Speaker_03
Where was it? On East 53rd Street. This is 53rd between what streets? 2nd and 3rd. Between 2nd and 3rd. Okay, so this is Midtown.

00:27:26 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:27:26 Speaker_03
But by the way, did anybody in your office know that you had a shop selling fashion?

00:27:33 Speaker_04
That's a good question. I kept it a secret, but the interesting thing was there were very strict rules on dress code at all airlines. Very strict. Not uniforms, but you had to wear nude stockings, low-heeled shoes, and

00:27:53 Speaker_04
I took advantage of the fact that I was really good at my job and I had a feeling I would not get fired if I wore, say, a wig or a boa around my neck.

00:28:08 Speaker_03
Wait, wait. You just said it was like a conservative environment. Yes. So how were you able to wear a boa or a wig?

00:28:16 Speaker_04
It happened over a period of time, and I think they sort of got used to it, and I never got sent home. People would get sent home, but I was really good at selling tours, tours to the Orient.

00:28:30 Speaker_04
I mean, I really made some big bucks for them, and I learned I have to say, I learned how to sell through that job. I learned service, sales. It was a great learning experience for me.

00:28:46 Speaker_03
All right, so you, this store, I'm assuming, when you opened it up, there was nothing like it because it was, you're selling clothing from the UK.

00:28:55 Speaker_04
From London, yeah. And so people looked at shopping as sort of a sport or a sort of a thing that you did. So couples would get dressed to go shopping. And word would get out.

00:29:12 Speaker_04
It would almost be like going to art galleries, right, where people want to go see what's going on. And couples of all ages, all types of people would come and shop.

00:29:25 Speaker_04
And a lot of the fashion magazines, a lot of the stores, you know, big department stores would come to see what we were doing. But we sold things to people of all ages. I mean, I still

00:29:41 Speaker_04
have people who are in their 80s now who are telling me they wore my clothes and I think it's so funny. Here's somebody who's 86 who is telling me she wore my clothes and I think that's pretty fab. That's really good.

00:29:55 Speaker_03
By the way, what was the store called? Kamali. Kamali, okay. And Eddie, was he like, did he, because he came to study economics, but did he prove to be actually a pretty good sales salesperson?

00:30:08 Speaker_04
First of all, he was incredibly handsome and incredibly charming. And he left Iran when he was 11 and was in boarding schools in London, outside of London, until he came here to go to college.

00:30:26 Speaker_03
So he had that British accent that was charming.

00:30:29 Speaker_04
Yeah, so he charmed everybody that came in the store. And then he would say, I would say to him, Eddie, I think this is way too much money to charge for this. And he would say, I'm going to sell it. You'll see. I'll sell it. And I was like, no.

00:30:49 Speaker_04
And he would. So then I just thought, well, I don't know what I'm talking about. So I'm just going to be quiet.

00:30:55 Speaker_03
So he was mainly handling the business side and you were kind of handling the creative side was that first day?

00:30:59 Speaker_04
Yeah, but you asked me before did anybody know at Northwest if I had this company and nobody did until

00:31:10 Speaker_04
Time magazine decided to do a story on snakeskin and how snakeskin was becoming the accessory or whatever and I had snakeskin wallpaper in the store and I was making at that point I started to make some things and I was making snakeskin vests and shirts and stuff like that and

00:31:36 Speaker_04
And so they came to 53rd Street and they photographed Eddie and me in some snakeskin in front of our store. And it got into Time Magazine. And one day, this buzzer starts going off from behind the glass wall at the front.

00:31:56 Speaker_04
And, Norma Kamali, come to the front. Wow.

00:32:02 Speaker_03
This is in the big cavernous room at Northwest Orient. Right.

00:32:07 Speaker_04
So I go walking up and they take me into a room and they open the Time magazine and they slap it down and said, what is this? And I said, oh wow. I didn't even see it myself. Like, wow. I was so excited and scared at the same time.

00:32:29 Speaker_04
I didn't know how to react. And they said they frowned on that. And I said, I understand.

00:32:36 Speaker_03
They frowned on the fact that you had a business or what?

00:32:40 Speaker_04
Yeah. But I realized then also that this was time, that it was getting very hard to do

00:32:49 Speaker_04
both and it just had to make a decision so I fight and and I didn't they didn't push me out but in a few months after that I Decided it was time to go focus on the but now but now you lose your your your cheap Flight to London to bringing be able to bring the stuff back, right?

00:33:10 Speaker_03
But it sounds like at this point. You're already you're already designing and selling some of your own pieces. I

00:33:14 Speaker_04
Yeah. I started to make some things and my mother helped me because as I told you before she was great. She made costumes and beautiful clothes and I really didn't know how to sew. I didn't know how to make a pattern.

00:33:33 Speaker_04
I didn't have any of those skills but My mother and I, through my growing up, would work together and say, Mom, can you make these pants? I want them to do this, this, and this.

00:33:46 Speaker_04
And she would make them until she stopped making things that she didn't think were good for me to wear. So she didn't want to make them. We did do a lot together before this.

00:33:58 Speaker_04
So I asked her to help me put together some of my new ideas and that's how I started it. So we started to do some things together and I would put them in the store to see how they would do and they would do really well.

00:34:16 Speaker_03
And what were you designing?

00:34:19 Speaker_04
I don't know if there's a term for what the clothing was at that time, to be honest. They were very creative, mainly one-of-a-kind pieces, handcrafted. I did a lot of snakeskin clothing. I did a lot of suede and doe skin, hand whipstitch skirts.

00:34:47 Speaker_04
with different shapes and flares. I did the very first suede skin skirt that I made, I hand whip stitched. You know, you just take a hole puncher and you punch everywhere and then you stitch it together with strips of suede.

00:35:05 Speaker_04
And I remember making that skirt. I put my heart and soul into it and I was so proud of it. And of course Eddie sold it for some whatever ridiculous amount of money, I thought. And so I had started to accumulate.

00:35:22 Speaker_04
The majority of the stock slowly became my designs. And in a very short time after the clothing was primarily mine.

00:35:35 Speaker_04
I had a full page in Vogue and I had a good size page in Bazaar and that was beyond belief because I thought somebody is gonna find me out. I don't know what I'm doing. Like I don't have a clue and I have a full page in Vogue and Bazaar. This is nuts.

00:36:02 Speaker_03
when we come back in just a moment, how Norma found the best person you could possibly imagine to narrate her first fashion show, a then-unknown Bette Midler, and how the ceiling eventually came down, literally and figuratively, on her clothing store.

00:36:21 Speaker_03
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00:38:38 Speaker_03
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1960s, and Norma Kamali's clothing store in midtown Manhattan is starting to get noticed.

00:38:48 Speaker_03
Her husband Eddie is running the place, and she's designing her own versions of some of the most iconic looks of the time.

00:38:57 Speaker_04
The first thing that got a lot of attention and that, I mean, I'm not going to take credit for being the first to do it, but I don't know anybody else that was doing it at the time, was hot pants. Hot pants.

00:39:15 Speaker_03
This is in, I guess, like 1968. For those who don't know what hot pants are, what are hot pants?

00:39:24 Speaker_04
So hot pants, don't forget, we're talking mini skirts, right? And how do you get a mini skirt shorter than mini? It has to be shorts. We're all wearing boots that just come below our knees. We're sort of having that proportion.

00:39:43 Speaker_04
And so they were little tiny shorts. They weren't obscene. They were very cool on long legs with boots and everybody looked like they had long legs and I made them What I did was I treated them as pieces of art.

00:40:01 Speaker_04
So I would do appliques and designs on these little tiny shorts.

00:40:07 Speaker_03
With like rhinestones and stuff?

00:40:09 Speaker_04
Well, not the rhinestones I did as tops, but the hot pants were mostly velvet appliques and lots of beautiful colors together. I would do palm trees and scenes, you know, all kinds of designs like that.

00:40:26 Speaker_03
And these were short shorts, basically. Obviously, you went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, you studied illustration, like super talented artistic person anyway, really into clothing. But you hadn't been a clothing designer.

00:40:41 Speaker_03
This was not part of your skill set. Was that hard to figure out how to do it? Because you didn't, I think you didn't study clothing design at FIT.

00:40:51 Speaker_04
No, but I'm obviously glad I didn't because I would have had a certain imprint that would have worked against what I really felt akin to. It was very easy for me to envision what I felt should be next.

00:41:11 Speaker_03
When you were running the store, getting attention, you were getting celebrities coming in. Like Bette Midler and the New York Dolls. They even had an album cover with one of you wearing your clothing.

00:41:27 Speaker_03
Were you getting lots of celebrities coming to the shop?

00:41:30 Speaker_04
tons.

00:41:30 Speaker_04
So Bette Midler started around the same time we started and we heard about this girl who was funny and an amazing singer and she was singing in this little dive place and so this one night we're at this club and we're sitting right up front by the stage, tiny stage, and this girl comes out and she is such a good singer and she's

00:41:59 Speaker_03
And she was not famous yet, right?

00:42:03 Speaker_04
No, she had brown hair like to her shoulders. And she was wearing vintage that was falling apart on her. And in the middle of her act, she stops and says, wait a minute, who are you people? And where did you get those clothes?

00:42:20 Speaker_04
I need to get those clothes. And so after the show, I met with her and she said, Have to get these I should have no money. Can I work for you?

00:42:32 Speaker_04
I'll work in your store Whatever, but I just don't have money Wow, so I said I know what you can do I'm gonna do my first fashion show and at the time I fashion shows were narrated.

00:42:47 Speaker_04
People talked about the clothes in the fashion show, so you had a narrator. So I said, I want you to narrate my fashion show. Bette Midler. Yeah, so this is my first fashion show. So she said, what should I say? I said, I don't care.

00:43:04 Speaker_04
Anything you want to say, when you see the clothes, you just say whatever you want to say. So we were in this mansion of somebody, a customer's boyfriend's aunt was selling it or something and so... Does the mansion in New York or on Long Island?

00:43:20 Speaker_04
In New York in the 60s. It was incredible. And so... We invited all of these people, including Bill Cunningham, and so I had clothes that looked like this. Let me explain what this was. I had big polka dot ruffle jackets. I had gold lame capris.

00:43:43 Speaker_04
I had platforms shoes. I had Clothes that nobody, in fact, stretch was not available in fabric. So the stretch I was using was actually girdle and circus fabric. And I used circus fabric to make these pieces. And so this is the tone.

00:44:07 Speaker_04
This is not what anybody was doing. So all of these fashion people come. Bette is sitting on a piano. with a microphone and she's saying whatever she wants and the people are looking at my clothes like like I lost my mind.

00:44:24 Speaker_03
This is just totally nuts. Totally crazy.

00:44:27 Speaker_04
The designer lost her mind and that woman on the piano lost her mind.

00:44:32 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:44:32 Speaker_04
Like nobody knew either one of us.

00:44:35 Speaker_03
But you had a bunch of like fashionistas there, Bill Cunningham, who's like a big fashion photographer.

00:44:40 Speaker_04
No, no, he wasn't a big fashion photographer. This is, this is, you know, the 60s.

00:44:46 Speaker_03
I got you.

00:44:46 Speaker_04
So he took a ton of photos. And that's when we became friends. And he said, dearie, I'm telling you something, they're gonna come back and understand what you're doing.

00:45:00 Speaker_03
Wow. This is like a time capsule of such a moment in New York City. Bette Midler and Bill Cunningham, unknowns, and Norma Kamali. Okay, so I'm curious about the actual shop, right? Because it's doing pretty well.

00:45:18 Speaker_03
It must have been doing really well because by 1974, this is like six years in, you had to move to a bigger space. You went to Madison Avenue.

00:45:26 Speaker_04
Right. So when we moved in to Madison, I thought if we're on Madison Avenue, I have to do different clothes. I have to grow up. I have to learn how to make really beautiful, well-made suits and dresses. So I started to do suiting, but classical suiting.

00:45:49 Speaker_04
And I was making suits for Raquel Welsh and Cher and everybody. So it really was the right decision to make, the right place to go. And that period of time in New York fashion was very creative. And it was one of my very creative times as well.

00:46:11 Speaker_03
But it sounds like you were focusing more now on professional clothing or like sort of high end. Right. Suits and dresses. I mean, you'd gone from you've been doing hot pants and right some of these.

00:46:22 Speaker_04
And snake skin and velvet, you know, bell bottoms.

00:46:27 Speaker_03
So things you would you would kind of wear at clubs or you would wear in the scene. And this sounds like you were now kind of shifting to making clothing that you might wear in an office or or to a sort of a fine dining restaurant.

00:46:41 Speaker_04
It was a little, it still was very unique in the design. It still was not typical of what you could find anywhere else. And prior to that, people only knew Eddie. They didn't know me.

00:46:56 Speaker_04
I was very much in the background, an occasional photo or something like that. But he really was the face of the brand. And then I started to get a little recognition. People wanted to know where the clothes were coming from.

00:47:15 Speaker_04
And so that was happening about that time.

00:47:19 Speaker_03
Were you interested in the business side or did you kind of let Eddie handle that and kind of just focus on the creative side?

00:47:28 Speaker_04
Yeah, I did. This is a time when women would not consider business as something they typically would do. It was OK to be creative in that space. But the business part of it, I never considered something that I want to have the responsibility of.

00:47:52 Speaker_04
And I assumed, like everyone else, that men were better at business than women. My world was that. Everybody believed it and assumed that that was the truth.

00:48:07 Speaker_03
And so he was in charge of hiring employees and making sure people came in on – and you were – I know we're going to get to what happened later on, but at this time, you know, when you were in the store on Madison Avenue, what was your relationship with Eddie like?

00:48:22 Speaker_03
Was it a pretty good marriage?

00:48:26 Speaker_04
You know, when you're 19, you're really still a child there. It's just you're a child in a grown up body. And by 1974, You know, our identities started to form and we were clearly going in different directions, which is expected, right?

00:48:49 Speaker_04
I mean, how do you not? I was so happy to have found something I love to do. And I worked so hard because I loved every minute of it. It wasn't work. He was much more social and outgoing.

00:49:13 Speaker_04
So there was sort of a difference in the way we looked at life and the way we looked at everything.

00:49:19 Speaker_03
He was more of like a partier.

00:49:22 Speaker_04
really big-time partier and and he was very into drugs and very into the nightlife and money is being spent on drugs and being spent on things that are not business related.

00:49:44 Speaker_04
And it became more and more difficult for me to get fabric and to just sort of do the basic things that you need.

00:49:53 Speaker_03
Wow. I mean, meantime, you're like your profile, I have to assume is rising. I mean, you had this kind of big

00:50:01 Speaker_03
big breakthrough in 1975 with the sleeping bag coat that anybody, I mean, people who don't know it, just type it in, you'll see, and you'll say, oh, of course, I know that, that's a sleeping bag coat.

00:50:13 Speaker_03
It was like a big puffer jacket that looked like a sleeping bag, and where does it coat, and became like this iconic thing. How did you come up with that idea?

00:50:25 Speaker_04
Well, I loved camping and I loved doing the whole canoeing and going down the rapids.

00:50:32 Speaker_04
And so at one cold night when I was trying to figure out how I was going to get out of my sleeping bag to find a place to go to the bathroom, I said, I'm not getting out of my sleeping bag. It's coming with me.

00:50:49 Speaker_04
So I wrapped it around myself and as I was wrapped in it, I thought, you know, I think I'm gonna go back and make a coat out of this. And so the first sleeping bag coat was my actual sleeping bag. And I used every bit of it.

00:51:07 Speaker_04
I was very conscious of saving fabric and, you know, very, very careful about those things. That pattern is still the pattern I use today for the classic Sleeping bag coat and I've made the coat every year since Wow and and that coat right that was

00:51:30 Speaker_03
I think it was like the first, because that material, right, sleeping bag material, which is like puffer jackets, like I read that people really did not wear puffer jackets unless they went skiing.

00:51:41 Speaker_03
Now it's like, you know, a North Face or a Patagonia puffer jackets, like, you know, a fashion statement. But in that at that time, like people only wore them to go skiing or for work.

00:51:52 Speaker_03
So it was sort of like unusual, right, for that material to be used in just a coat.

00:51:57 Speaker_04
Well, first of all, sleeping bag fabric was different from fabric you went skiing in. Mine was sort of a khaki fabric on one side and the inside was flannel with geese and it was fabulous.

00:52:13 Speaker_04
Then I bought a ton of sleeping bags and just started cutting them up like a crazy woman making sleeping bag coats. Was it a hit right away, the sleeping bag coat?

00:52:25 Speaker_04
It actually was and you know, that's like 74 75 76 studio 54 opens and the doorman are wearing my sleeping bag coat and so people Decided if they bought the sleeping bag coat and stood outside Maybe that would be a way they could get inside and I did not dissuade them.

00:52:52 Speaker_04
I So we sold a lot of sleeping bag coats during that period of time.

00:53:00 Speaker_03
You know, I'm surprised that you I'm curious about your public profile, right?

00:53:04 Speaker_03
Because by the by the late 70s, I mean, you were getting Bianca Jagger coming into your store and like Ian Schrager and, you know, of Studio 54 and like all these sort of New York iconic fashion kind of in crowd people coming in.

00:53:20 Speaker_03
But it sounds like you didn't have as much of a public profile as Eddie. Come on. You were Norma Kamali. You were designing this stuff. Did people know who you were?

00:53:30 Speaker_04
No, my personality has always been, even up till now, very, very private. I always felt intuitively that my clothes should be the star. My clothes should make people feel good. People wearing my clothes should be the celebrities and the stars.

00:53:56 Speaker_04
My personality is really not an outgoing personality. However, I attribute that decision, quite frankly, through the years to one of the reasons for my longevity.

00:54:13 Speaker_04
When you're the flavor of the month, people get tired of you and they want to see the next flavor of the month.

00:54:21 Speaker_03
Totally agree. Yeah.

00:54:23 Speaker_04
I think there is sort of a formula there that works because I always did what I felt was relevant and I never really allowed myself to be out there. I pulled back a lot. I didn't go to parties. I just really stayed sort of in the background.

00:54:47 Speaker_03
I mean, this was really at a time where you're I mean, if we were in the Instagram, Twitter age, I mean, you'd be all over the place, right? There's an iconic photograph that everyone listening will know this photo.

00:55:02 Speaker_03
Anyone over, let's say, 40 will know this photo. It's of Farrah Fawcett in a red swimsuit. It's just an iconic photo. That's your swimsuit. You designed that swimsuit, which I believe today is in the Smithsonian's permanent collection.

00:55:18 Speaker_03
And you all of a sudden, I think kind of overnight, become known as a swimsuit designer.

00:55:25 Speaker_04
So I asked Farrah, Farrah was a regular in the store and a just spectacular human being. And so she was in at once and I saw her in the store and I said, I have to ask you, why did you choose that swimsuit? Because I hated it.

00:55:44 Speaker_04
I hated that swimsuit so much. I did six of them. And I would do six to test to see how people reacted to see whether or not I would continue doing it.

00:55:57 Speaker_04
And I would do these tests and I remember thinking, I don't know, I just am not sure about this suit. And don't you know, She purchased it, and I didn't realize, I didn't know that she did.

00:56:10 Speaker_04
And then she said, well, I had it in my bag, and I was with my friend, this photographer, and we talked about doing photos for a poster, but this was just another sort of, we're gonna take pictures.

00:56:27 Speaker_04
And she said, so I had it with me, so I put it on, and that's why. And I said, oh my God. I really, I couldn't believe out of all the suits she had for me that she chose that.

00:56:40 Speaker_04
But clearly, the suit is just the subtext to her beautiful smile, her, just the aura she puts out. And I think the reason men love it is because she's not threatening at all. She's just very sweet.

00:57:00 Speaker_03
I'm curious. I mean, this is a time. This is like the late 70s, where this is pre obviously long before internet commerce. And, and so you are in New York, which is a super hugely influential place.

00:57:13 Speaker_03
But people couldn't get your stuff outside of New York, right?

00:57:17 Speaker_04
Not yet. No.

00:57:18 Speaker_03
No, at that time you had to go to the Kamali shop on Madison Avenue to buy your stuff. And you couldn't get it in LA at like Fred Siegel or, you know, some of those things. Okay.

00:57:29 Speaker_03
And I mean, this is also a time where American designers are starting to really, right? I mean, it's the beginning of a complete revolution that, you know, Donna Karan and you're going to have.

00:57:45 Speaker_03
Ralph Lauren, and you're going to have Calvin Klein, and then Vera Wang, and on and on, we're leaving out lots of them. But right, this is kind of the beginning of that move, because most designers were in Europe.

00:57:57 Speaker_04
That's correct. And the 70s started to be a especially in New York, an incredibly expressive time. There was such an energy and expression. It sort of was what London was in the 60s. This was now the next sort of energy ball that was intensely exciting.

00:58:24 Speaker_03
By the way, did you have a sense that you guys were making money? I mean, did it seem like – I mean, you saw people coming into the shop and – or were you just not even paying attention to that?

00:58:37 Speaker_04
I was paying attention because it takes money to buy fabric. It takes money to sort of create the next thing you're going to sell.

00:58:48 Speaker_04
That's probably where the differences between Eddie and myself came about because he was spending a lot of money from the company.

00:59:01 Speaker_03
He was actually spending money from the business account of the company, his own social life?

00:59:07 Speaker_04
Yes, and he was going out every night and then he started, you know word would get back to me that he was with girls and then he started Dating the salesgirl in the store that I had fired because she wasn't doing her job So he hired her back.

00:59:27 Speaker_04
So it started we started to have that kind of a not so great relationship And we'd grown apart. And to be quite honest, I wasn't mortified that he was seeing other women. In fact, I was like, oh, well, you know, that's the way it goes.

00:59:46 Speaker_04
But what was happening was people were starting to realize that there was somebody else in the Kamali thing and that there was somebody who was designing the clothes. And

01:00:00 Speaker_04
At that time it was very hard for men to reconcile a woman with power And and I wasn't I was very I mean I hardly spoke I was very quiet But my power wasn't coming from me. It was coming from people's idea of me and That was bothering him too.

01:00:22 Speaker_04
And I think part of the reason he was dating the sales girl was because he had some sort of issue with what was happening with me.

01:00:32 Speaker_03
And so how did you guys resolve it?

01:00:36 Speaker_04
Well, clearly this was not gonna keep going in a good direction.

01:00:43 Speaker_04
And I think the turning point for me, you know, there's always that one thing that happens that's so horrific that you thank your lucky stars that it happened because you make the right move.

01:00:57 Speaker_04
And so I remember being in the sample room one day and this same sales girl that he hired back, came in to tell me that she decided she was going to be the new designer and that she wanted me to make some of her designs and she described them to me.

01:01:15 Speaker_04
So I was just looking at her thinking this girl has definitely lost her mind but I just let her keep talking and then she leaves And I went to my cutting table. I didn't even say anything.

01:01:28 Speaker_04
I went to my cutting table and the ceiling over my cutting table just fell. And I said to myself, time to leave. And so I just left. I literally, I just left.

01:01:43 Speaker_03
Do you mean you just walked away from the business?

01:01:46 Speaker_04
Yes, I had $98 to my name. At that point, Eddie and I had already separated our living situation. I got an apartment, I had a mattress, I didn't have furniture, I had my clothes, and that was it.

01:02:06 Speaker_04
And it was definitely one of those moments in your life that you think, oh my God, what am I gonna do?

01:02:20 Speaker_03
when we come back in just a moment, how Norma figured out how to restart and rebuild her business, and how she also learned to reinvent it with new designs, new technology, and a rollout at Walmart. Stay with us.

01:02:35 Speaker_03
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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01:05:04 Speaker_03
So it's the mid-1970s and Norma Kamali has gotten a divorce from her husband Eddie and walked away from the clothing design store that they started together.

01:05:15 Speaker_03
And this is not one of those stories where they agreed to split up the business in equal parts.

01:05:23 Speaker_04
I had the $98 that I had on me. That was it. And I'd been asking around to see if I wanted to leave, what would be the right thing to do? How do you handle it? And I had advice that you can't take anything if you leave.

01:05:41 Speaker_04
It's not, you know, that's not how you do it. If you leave the business. Yeah. So I, if I wanted to leave and he didn't want me to leave, I mean, he, he literally contacted me to say, you owe me a swimwear collection before you go. And I was like, okay.

01:06:02 Speaker_04
And knowing full well that I wouldn't have money and that I would have to come back. So I think he really expected that I would.

01:06:11 Speaker_03
Wow. So you, I mean, this was a business that you started. I mean, that store, Kamali, presumably had to shut down.

01:06:20 Speaker_04
Well, he kept it going for a while. Obviously it didn't stay for that long, I think maybe a year or two. And I really, I was so

01:06:36 Speaker_04
Frightened and I'd never really told I never talked to anybody about anything private or personal and so I felt really kind of alone and a big lesson I learned was that being private and quiet is not gonna get you anywhere and I had had a

01:07:01 Speaker_04
plan to meet this writer from the LA Times which was one of a rare situation that I would ever meet an editor and she really persisted and wanted to meet me and my eyes were swollen shut from crying and I was so embarrassed but I thought

01:07:22 Speaker_04
I know where I'm supposed to meet her but I don't have her number so I went to meet her and she said what happened to you and for the first time in my life I shared anything private.

01:07:36 Speaker_03
You told her that your marriage was dissolved and that your business is...

01:07:39 Speaker_04
and that I've left the business. And she said, well, then what do you need? And I was like, oh my god, I need everything. And she said, well, I'm going to get you some sewing machines.

01:07:51 Speaker_04
And so I realized that if you talk to people and tell them what you need, something can happen. But if you keep it to yourself, nothing is going to happen.

01:08:05 Speaker_03
She connected you to people who had sewing machines?

01:08:07 Speaker_04
I mean, this reporter for the... Yeah, she, her husband knew somebody in the industry. And then I decided to reach out to people and ask for help and ask if I could borrow money. And that was my first like, okay, I better figure out how to do this.

01:08:29 Speaker_03
So, I mean, what you did have, though, was your reputation and obviously your track record of designing already kind of iconic designs, but no money. This is a time where I imagine, especially for a woman entrepreneur to go and like raise money.

01:08:49 Speaker_03
I mean, was that even a possibility? Could you have gone out and like... I don't know, pitched people and gotten investors on board? No.

01:08:58 Speaker_04
Don't forget, women didn't have businesses. I didn't know a woman who had her own business, nevermind in the fashion industry.

01:09:10 Speaker_04
I knew women who were partners who had shops and things like that, but to have your own company and run it and design for it, that was sort of like, I couldn't think about it. I just had to do it.

01:09:25 Speaker_04
And so friends invested their money in me and, you know, family, friends, anybody, anything that I could muster, I did and

01:09:39 Speaker_04
I was so committed to paying everybody as soon as I could because what they did for me is they gave me a freedom that I so desperately wanted.

01:09:53 Speaker_03
All right, so it's 1978 and you're completely starting again and you call your new business OMO, On My Own. I love that. And did you kind of recreate this idea? Was it a brick and mortar store with a space to design clothes in the back as well?

01:10:13 Speaker_04
Yeah, I had to come up with something. So I came up with OMO Norma Kamali. And I, I did find a space on 56th Street and there was a space that I used as a sample room. And so that was really the turning point in my career.

01:10:38 Speaker_03
All right, so you've got OMO, you're starting from scratch and kind of, and this is a time I think you started to experiment with like material that was used like sweatpants, like sweat clothing.

01:10:53 Speaker_04
Yes, so for my entire career, I would put in styles in the store and then the people from Bloomingdale's would come in and I would see full page ads with my styles, but not with my name on it, but with Bloomingdale's.

01:11:14 Speaker_03
You basically, they were knocking your style off.

01:11:17 Speaker_04
Right, and I was crying trying to pay the rent. Plain and simple.

01:11:23 Speaker_03
You would design stuff, sell it in your boutique, and then you would see that Bloomingdale's or other places.

01:11:30 Speaker_04
And so finally, I was doing a swimwear collection. And as I was doing the collection, I thought, I think I'm going to get sweatshirt fabric because I love to swim.

01:11:42 Speaker_04
And when I would swim, my brother had these sweatshirts from the Army Navy store, and I would put them on when I got out of the water.

01:11:53 Speaker_04
I bought gray sweatshirt fabric and I designed some cover-up pieces for swimwear and then I thought this is really beautiful. I did a dress and then I did a jumpsuit and then I did a coat and then I did a suit and I had 36 pieces.

01:12:11 Speaker_04
all in gray sweatshirt and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking you know what somebody's gonna make a lot of money on this and this time it better be me because I can't have any more sleepless nights we gotta pay the rent and

01:12:27 Speaker_04
So I didn't know what to do, so I contacted Women's Wear Daily, who were very supportive of me, especially going out on my own. And they came to see it, and I said, how do I protect this? And they said, do not show it to anybody.

01:12:46 Speaker_04
We are going to introduce you to someone who will be a great partner for you to do a license with. So they introduced me. to Sydney Kimmel, who had Jones Apparel at the time, which was a hugely successful line for women going into the workplace.

01:13:08 Speaker_04
And we signed a deal. In two weeks, we were in business. Then the brand, the name, became known globally. It really just took off in a huge way.

01:13:25 Speaker_03
I'm looking at a photo of a Norma Kamali sweat jumpsuit from 1982, and I see my mom in that. It's not my mom, but I see my mom in that picture. That did really well. I mean, I think by 1981, you were doing $11 million in sales. Yeah, easily, yes.

01:13:44 Speaker_04
And it became global. I had licenses in Japan. in Europe, in the US. I had 30 licenses for everything covering accessories, the whole deal. And that's when I really learned how to negotiate, how to manage a bigger kind of company. But

01:14:10 Speaker_04
there comes a point when you get too much attention that you get scared and you think, this is going to be the end of me because it's going to be too much.

01:14:22 Speaker_04
And so after six years of doing the collection with Jones Apparel, I didn't renew the contract. Now, let me tell you, there was a lot of money on the table.

01:14:37 Speaker_05
I'm sure.

01:14:38 Speaker_04
But I said, I don't need a lot of money. I just need my independence. And how can I maintain that? What can I do to maintain that but still keep my brand in a good place? Walking away, as we all know,

01:15:00 Speaker_04
is a very important thing to do at the very right time, and it is the hardest thing to do. But those were the times that really saved me from really bad situations.

01:15:18 Speaker_03
But you thought that, I mean, I guess I'm not entirely clear about why you would, I mean, if it was successful, and it was doing well, and there was money to be made,

01:15:28 Speaker_04
What was well, yeah as it got bigger and bigger the quality control Diminished and that's not good for me, right? That's not good for my reputation and then the Distribution was in control.

01:15:43 Speaker_04
Yeah, I remember sax was complaining Because I did these big yellow Slickers, right? They were really big with Buffalo check flannel Buffalo check inside and these are rain like raincoats Rain slickers, big, fun ones.

01:15:59 Speaker_04
And they did a big ad promotion, everything, and they still hadn't gotten their shipment. And I was on my way home, and I passed a store on 14th Street, like a schlocky junk store.

01:16:14 Speaker_04
with a rolling rack outside of the yellow slickers, of my yellow slickers. And I said, what is happening with the distribution? Why are there no controls? And I remember I was told, you're only a pimple on an elephant's ass.

01:16:32 Speaker_04
And that's how big their company was. And I thought, oh, OK. I think this is the time to hang it up.

01:16:41 Speaker_03
And, of course, another thing that's really hard to keep control over is the designs themselves, right? I mean, because, I mean, let's just be clear, like, it's very hard to patent designs.

01:16:52 Speaker_04
Now, you can't.

01:16:53 Speaker_03
Right? You can't. You can't. So, which is why, like, fast fashion began in the 90s and, right, sort of cheap knockoffs that you would find at, you know, some of these stores, because you can't, right? People can't really just kind of copy your style.

01:17:08 Speaker_04
It's sort of, to be honest, it's sort of a way of life in the fashion industry. There's a whole, most of the industry copies. And for me, I've always thought, I'm not gonna get upset about it.

01:17:25 Speaker_04
I have another idea, so I don't have to worry that they took that idea. But when it comes to your survival in the business, that's when you start to get anxious about it. Now, you know, people still copy me.

01:17:41 Speaker_04
In fact, there's this young designer who in 2016, she opened, did a website and she based her website on a dress I designed in 1973 that I still sell called the All-in-One.

01:17:59 Speaker_04
And the dress can be worn in a hundred different ways, it's easy care, and I have a whole video showing the way you wear it, and her whole website is this dress, the video she did of all the ways you could wear it, and that she is the creator of the dress.

01:18:18 Speaker_04
And she even came to my store to see what was going on, the whole thing. So I hear about this, and she is a very small business. And my CFO says, we have to put a stop to this. She can't make these claims. So he talks to the lawyer, the whole thing.

01:18:37 Speaker_04
I said, this is what I want to do. I don't want to have negative conversations about somebody knocking me off. The only thing I care about is that she makes the dress in a good way.

01:18:51 Speaker_04
The way she's making it is so ugly and poorly made that what I want to do is drop all of the charges against her and I'm going to send her a pattern of the dress with instructions on how to make it. And I said, and you know what?

01:19:06 Speaker_04
Now she's not taking advantage of me. I gave her a gift and that's it. And so that's my attitude at this point about knocking off. I mean, it's just so pervasive though.

01:19:20 Speaker_03
Normal, while you were, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like in the 80s, you were really focusing on comfort clothing. Like, I mean, now we all talk about it because everybody's been doing Zoom calls.

01:19:34 Speaker_03
And here I am, I'm wearing pajama pants right now and house slippers. But, you know, normally together I'd be wearing, you know, a collared shirt and, you know, I'd be meeting Norma Kamali. I would dress really well.

01:19:48 Speaker_03
But it seems like you were doing like comfort clothing, you know, washable, machine washable.

01:19:55 Speaker_03
How would you describe your, like if I were to go to a shop and said, I want to look, I want to dress in Norma Kamali stuff in like 1985, what would I look like?

01:20:04 Speaker_04
Well, my philosophy has been the same all these years. So I was believing in clothes that felt good on, knits, clothes that you could wash and not dry clean, fun clothes, clothes that you could be active in. I've always, I'm still that same person.

01:20:28 Speaker_04
I'm wearing sweats as we speak. I love to feel good in clothes. I don't want to feel uncomfortable. I don't even want to think about my clothes. But the most important thing is that it's not precious. You can wear it anytime.

01:20:46 Speaker_04
You don't have to hang it on a special hanger or it's going to get wrinkled. That to me is so not on the list of what I'm going to do.

01:20:56 Speaker_03
Yeah, I'm curious because today, like for example, streetwear, which is such a weird term to me because streetwear means like $600 t-shirts, right? Or like $300 rubber flip-flops. That's streetwear.

01:21:08 Speaker_03
I'm like, who on the street is wearing a $500 t-shirt? Was your stuff?

01:21:14 Speaker_04
super hot expensive or was it was it affordable affordable so to me value is also really important that you're able to pay the rent and still have something you love and

01:21:31 Speaker_04
You know, the idea of somebody buying like a $5,000 handbag and not having any money to do anything else is like insanity. So for me, beautiful clothes don't have to be expensive.

01:21:47 Speaker_03
And I mean, clearly that it sounds like that became kind of a or was a mantra of yours. I mean, because you

01:21:53 Speaker_03
I mean, I'm moving forward a little bit, but you would go on to partner with Walmart in the early 2000s to debut a collection of clothing at Walmart, which, by the way, you can still get through, like, eBay, and people sell them at a premium, like Norma Kamali t-shirts and stuff.

01:22:11 Speaker_03
But tell me about that partnership, because, I mean, Norma Kamali, high fashion, you know, there's a certain kind of reputation and brand, and Walmart obviously is not that.

01:22:21 Speaker_04
Yeah, I'll tell you. So first of all, when Halston made a decision to do a big box, I think it was pennies, it killed his career.

01:22:32 Speaker_04
And so, you know, word has always been you don't want to get involved with those because for your reputation, it's not good. But I love to meet people and listen to ideas and what they are offering.

01:22:49 Speaker_04
So if people approach me about something, I probably nine times out of ten will have the conversation. I always learn something from it.

01:22:59 Speaker_03
And and it sounds like that's what happened in this case, right? I mean, I think I think at some point, well, like someone you knew from the industry who who got a job at Walmart, like called you up and and made some sort of offer.

01:23:12 Speaker_04
Yes. And he said, I'm going to ask you something and I don't want you to say no right away. He said, I'm working at Walmart and I want you to come and meet me here. And I said, oh,

01:23:28 Speaker_04
I don't I really don't think so and he said I know you would like this meeting I know you're gonna like it just for the experience you have to come so I said okay I I trust your judgment on that so I get on a plane and

01:23:45 Speaker_04
And then you take that little plane to Walmart, to Bentonville, and I go to my first Walmart Superstore, and I am blown away. I have never, I mean, I'm a New York City girl.

01:24:00 Speaker_03
Yeah, there's no Walmart Superstore in New York, yeah.

01:24:03 Speaker_04
And I don't drive a car, so I'm not, you know, I'm like a New York girl. So I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, holy mackerel. So then I meet some really smart people.

01:24:16 Speaker_04
We have these great conversations, and they want to have a fashion line for Walmart. And I said, I don't think so. I don't think that's a good idea. I'm just saying. And a little over a year later, I got a call from them.

01:24:37 Speaker_04
It appears that they did do a fashion line for Walmart and it didn't work. And somebody that was at that meeting said, we have to talk to Norma, but this time we'll come to see you. So they said, what is in your mind? What are you thinking about?

01:24:55 Speaker_04
And I told them that I thought that they should have the core of a wardrobe, like a trench coat, a white shirt, a black trouser, a jacket, all the basics.

01:25:10 Speaker_04
And so I remember when I was doing a t-shirt, t-shirt designs for them and I see 650 units and I said, I don't know, that doesn't seem like it's going to be enough. And they said, well, that's 650,000 units. And I was like, oh, okay.

01:25:30 Speaker_04
All right, I get it. And so the quality of the clothes was exactly the quality I wanted. The fabric was the fabric I wanted. And why so? Because when you order 650,000 units, you can get the quality you want and the fabric you want.

01:25:52 Speaker_04
That's a tremendous amount of power. My experience at Walmart was extraordinary.

01:26:00 Speaker_03
I read that when the collection was debuted at Walmart and you were at a Walmart, people were running up to you with cash register receipts for you to autograph them.

01:26:10 Speaker_03
It seems to me that part of what you have tried to do and have done throughout your career has been to constantly, you're constantly coming up with different ideas. Like, you got into e-commerce super early, like in 1996.

01:26:26 Speaker_03
And you were on eBay, like, really early. And, I mean, in the 90s, you introduced, I think, a line of, like, home goods products. Like, were all those things...was it just you following your curiosity?

01:26:42 Speaker_03
Or were these, like, really kind of strategic business decisions that you were making?

01:26:48 Speaker_04
I actually had a website in like between 95 and 98 where I started to really kind of want to be because I was so comfortable with computers and because of the airlines and I understood what you could do with this kind of technology.

01:27:08 Speaker_04
I just wanted to jump right in right away and of course it was way early but I I do well when I'm doing a lot of different things because I find each of them inspires the other and keeps things very exciting.

01:27:30 Speaker_04
Remember, I haven't changed my job in 53 years. I've had the same job. And so when I'm interested and I see something is an opportunity that can use creativity and technology, I am super excited about it. I, you know, I love VR.

01:27:55 Speaker_04
I love some of the amazing directions we can go in. This is a very exciting time, inventive time.

01:28:07 Speaker_03
This is gonna be bigger than the 60s were in the revolution part of it when I mean there's there's so much There's so much in your life and career that we can that we just can't talk about because it's been you've had this incredible

01:28:25 Speaker_03
And I know you've got a book kind of talking a little bit about your life and also about your experience. I gather the message of your book is like, hey, actually, your life gets better as you get older.

01:28:42 Speaker_04
Yeah, the book is called I am invincible. And what I do is I share my life experiences through the decades. And so the goal of the book is to help women get through each of these decades with some tools and information.

01:29:03 Speaker_04
And aging with power is sort of the headline of the book in that you can get better with age. I love the fact that I'm so much smarter now than I ever was and that

01:29:20 Speaker_04
I do things now to serve my purpose in this lifetime, which is a very freeing experience. We all have a different schedule, we all have a different timeline, and one should never judge theirs by others.

01:29:38 Speaker_04
And I think the universe just is checking things out for us and helping make the right decisions like meeting your soulmate at 65. I am very fortunate that I did end up finding someone who is my soulmate.

01:29:57 Speaker_04
I'm happy that it was at this point in my life because honestly, I wasn't ready earlier.

01:30:03 Speaker_03
It's funny because I talked to my mom about this, who's almost your age, and she always says to me, this is the best time of my life. I love being in my 70s. Do you feel that way?

01:30:17 Speaker_04
Yeah, she's absolutely right. You know, anti-wrinkle, anti-aging, all of that just drives me and your mother crazy, okay? I will speak for her. So I feel that I'm in the place where I can communicate and help educate

01:30:40 Speaker_04
what aging is about, and whether it's a 20-year-old that feels like she's getting old, or a 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old, the idea of getting old should be part of the passage in a woman's life, not something to fear, but something to cherish because of the knowledge and the experience you gain in each of these decades.

01:31:09 Speaker_03
Yeah. When you think about the history of American fashion, I think a lot of people would say you're a big part of it. You're right there in it. It's like the history of restaurants.

01:31:21 Speaker_03
Alice Waters, who's on the show, she's an incredibly important part of why so many people eat local and organic food. Do you feel like that? Do you feel like a pioneer in American fashion?

01:31:37 Speaker_04
You know, it's really interesting. I look at Norma Kamali almost as this other person, right? I think that Norma Kamali contributes to the fashion industry.

01:31:52 Speaker_04
I like to think people are comfortable in a casual lifestyle in their clothing because of maybe something I did with sweats. I'm like that little speck that gets things activated and then it becomes something bigger and much bigger than I am.

01:32:13 Speaker_04
I certainly don't want to have like my name on it to feel better. I just sort of feel, hmm, that's, that's pretty cool. I like that. I like that that's happening. I like that people are wearing sweats now at home.

01:32:28 Speaker_04
And everybody's saying they're gonna never wear sweats again. Sorry, I don't believe you. I know you're going to wear sweats again.

01:32:38 Speaker_03
When you think about it, you had no intention of becoming a fashion designer. You went to the Fashion Institute of Technology because your mom was like, you better get a job. And that really was your objective, the idea that you would become this

01:32:51 Speaker_03
known fashion designer was not part of your plan, but you did, and, you know, a successful, well-known designer. How much of your story do you, and your success, do you think happened because you worked really hard and were really strategic?

01:33:06 Speaker_03
And how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky?

01:33:10 Speaker_04
First of all, yes, you have to work really hard. And the way you work really hard is that you're doing what you love. You love it so much that you don't feel like you're working hard.

01:33:27 Speaker_04
And that you have good relationships because the last thing you want to do is burn bridges. And relationships, you know, the one thing I can tell you is do not burn a bridge because that bridge is going to come around again.

01:33:45 Speaker_04
You're going to see all those people again. You cannot believe how everything comes round. But I also think, I hope I don't sound too crazy or woo woo, but I do think the universe has a big plan for us.

01:34:07 Speaker_04
And you can call it luck, but I think it's even more than that. I think we do things because that's what we should be doing.

01:34:20 Speaker_03
That's iconic fashion designer Norma Kamali. And by the way, remember when she was talking about that one-off design she did back in the late 1960s? That suede skirt that she whip-stitched using a hole puncher?

01:34:33 Speaker_03
Well, a few years back, decades after she created that skirt, Norma was out walking around town.

01:34:40 Speaker_04
And I see a girl walking towards me in the most amazing skirt. And I kept looking at it thinking, oh my god, it moves so beautifully. I really love that skirt. And as she was coming towards me, that was my skirt and she must have been 19.

01:35:00 Speaker_04
So clearly that skirt was purchased by someone either handed down to her mother to her or sold then given to a vintage store that then sold it to someone. That skirt probably has had several lives and here I was seeing it

01:35:21 Speaker_04
And I wanted to stop her, but I thought, no, that's not what you're supposed to do. You're just supposed to look at it. And I had chills. I was so moved by it. I'll never forget that moment.

01:35:38 Speaker_03
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.

01:35:46 Speaker_03
And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter. You can find it at gyros.com. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Ariblui.

01:36:01 Speaker_03
It was edited by Neva Grant. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, Devin Schwartz, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates.

01:36:15 Speaker_03
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

01:36:40 Speaker_03
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01:36:58 Speaker_03
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