October 14, 2026 |
It is 8am sharp and Norma Kamali, who is thoughtful, funny and full of wisdom, is at home in New York City. It is hard to believe that she is 81. “I create such chaos! I am a human chaos machine. I have so many things going on and they’re all very exciting and fun. This morning I woke up and said, ‘Am I nuts? Am I crazy?’ Anyway, here we are.”
Kamali has some kind of secret energy. She’s been in business since 1967 and has never stopped. She is multi-award-winning, but still has the dynamic of someone just starting out. Her designs are relevant: invariably “Oh, I’ve bought a Norma Kamali dress”, and out comes a fabulous pink swishy mini halter dress, or “I’m wearing Norma Kamali today”, someone says when I mention I have spoken with her. She is an international legend. “I don’t think [I’m a] legend,” she says. “I think when you’re around so long you start to grow over different generations. I find it fascinating, because the beauty of the younger generation is that they don’t know anything about my history, so they’re only interested in what I’m doing right now. I’m thrilled that 18-year-olds and 25-year-olds are wearing my clothes. That’s a very cool part of it.”
jacket and trousers by NORMA KAMALI resort 2022, T-shirt and glasses by NORMA KAMALI
Norma Kamali dresses are undeniably youthful and glamorous. They deliver a fabulous party, a great night out, amazing dancing and unadulterated fun, at whatever age. This is something she has maintained since the beginning. Her trick? “I’m just doing what I feel is right for now. I hate to use the word spiritual because it sounds religious, but it’s some connection that I’m making, that I’m not aware of. My intuition of what’s needed at a certain time has been honed because I’ve gone through so many decades and so many political revolutionary experiences and cultural changes. There’s a rhythm to that. I’m always in doubt. I’m always questioning, but I am aware of the fact that for the amount of time I’ve been doing this and my age, I have experience beyond and beyond.”
jacket by NORMA KAMALI resort 2018, T-shirt and jeans by NORMA KAMALI, shoes by KHAITE
When Kamali turned 50, she re-evaluated everything. She sold all her possessions, including, “all of my art. I became super minimalist.” It became a way of life for her. “When I got married three years ago and we started living together, it took time for my husband [lawyer Marty Edelman] to get the gist of what was going on, but now he appreciates the simplicity. It’s calming and meditative and gives you a lot of room to think.” At home, where these pictures were taken, they have a room which they share with their desks. “On my wall behind my desk, I have my favourite quotes. And on his wall, he has his favourite quotes. I also have one LED wall that I can turn on or off. If I have art, then it becomes a constant influence and it doesn’t give me room for other thoughts, other ideas.”
jacket by NORMA KAMALI resort 2018, T-shirt and jeans by NORMA KAMALI, shoes by KHAITE
How did Kamali get waylaid by fashion? “Well, I wanted to be a painter. My mother painted, I studied anatomy. I really liked painting the human form. Picasso is probably at the top of my list of artists that will forever be important. When I was 11, my mother gave me a talk about being independent and being able to earn my own living. She said, ‘Pick a man that you love, not a man that’s going to take care of you or support you.’ What she kept impressing upon me was that if I became a painter, the chances are that I would have to be dependent on somebody. Then I got a scholarship to FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology] for Fashion Illustration and a painting scholarship at NYU. I morphed that into fashion.”
T-shirt, jacket and glasses by NORMA KAMALI, skirt by NORMA KAMALI pre-fall 2025, shoes by CROCS
When Kamali came to London in the early ’60s she connected to the spirit of the fashion revolution. She had a job with an airline that meant she could travel back and forth to London for $29, round trip. “I was working in the office and every Thursday night I would leave for London and come back on Monday. I worked these crazy shifts so I could have that long weekend. I would shop and bring clothes back. It started with my friends and then it started to build, and I found a basement store where everybody was doing things by hand. The rent was $285 a month and I knew I could pay it. I decorated it from the Salvation Army.” And so ‘Kamali’ was born at 229 East 53rd Street. She stocked it with vintage finds from Antiquarius in London; Biba too, which she says was fantastic, and Bus Stop. “When I started to sell my own clothes, they were different – it was the evolution of what came next. I thought I was so smart. I thought I knew everything, and ignorance is bliss. What did I know?” she says with a laugh. “I just thought, I can do this, I can do that. It was an inch at a time, but I was very lucky to have an audience that agreed with what I was doing.” That line-up included tie-dye velvets, rhinestone T-shirts and the first pair of hot pants in NYC. Then, in the early ’70s, she began to introduce her signature draped jersey dresses. In 1974 she created a collection made from parachute silk and, most infamously, the Sleeping Bag Coat that has been feted ever since.
coat by NORMA KAMALI resort 2025, T-shirt and glasses by NORMA KAMALI, trousers by NORMA KAMALI SS22, shoes by ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
Kamali is a fashion inventor, quite literally. In 1980 she created and trademarked the first pair of sweatpants, for which she won a Coty Award for design innovation; in 1982 she designed and patented the first pair of heeled sneakers. Her timeline of achievements is impressive and ongoing. She has always embraced technology: in 1996, her AW collection was launched with a live online virtual reality experience. Last year she took a generative AI course at MIT.
Unlike many designers, she doesn’t have an archive. “I did have a warehouse filled with years of clothes and, when I turned 50, I emptied it and sold everything. My biggest customers in that sale were designers. Now I don’t save anything.” She has witnessed tremendous change. “I’m talking probably more Western as I can’t generalise for the globe, but I think women are more powerful now than ever before, emboldened and privileged in so many ways.” She acknowledges that “it’s nice to be vulnerable too. I think there’s an important aspect of vulnerability. We also have to figure out the balance.”
jacket and trousers by NORMA KAMALI AW19, T-shirt and glasses by NORMA KAMALI, shoes by ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
How do we balance that? “In some ways there’s a lot more freedom in the way women dress,” she says, “but in other ways we are more trapped into wanting to be branded as a certain type of woman, so we dress a certain way rather than with the individuality that was found in the ’70s, which was spirited. “Back then it was like, ‘I don’t want to look like my best friend. I want to look like me. I want to be an individual.’ No two people would want to dress the same way. It would be crazy to even think that somebody would have a stylist. They would be horrified that somebody would have to give them an idea of how to dress.” Of course, there was no social media then, no performative ‘perfection’. She adds, “We never carried a camera around. We never photographed what we were doing but now we’re all very conscious of how that reads. Not only do we do it, but we judge whether it’s good or not. Social media is having an incredible impact on the grooming of women in our time. I’m totally impressed by the power of it. Both the positive and the negative.”
jacket and trousers by NORMA KAMALI AW19, T-shirt and glasses by NORMA KAMALI, shoes by ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
Kamali’s been part of cultural fashion moments starring Farrah Fawcett, Christie Brinkley, Grace Jones and many more. She has created clever fashion films, including 1986’s The Reading of the Will, and works tirelessly to promote good health driven in part by the loss of so many friends to Aids in the ’80s and ’90s. She is an advocate for supporting women, notably including Taliban widows through the project Weaving for a Brighter Future. Kamali says “hard happens all the time”. She has an innate acceptance that this is part of life’s rhythm, something she embraces and is perhaps what makes her such an achiever. She has recently started posting information around the Moon’s cycles: “You are defining a rollercoaster – life is always up and down.”
In 2017, well ahead of the curve, she launched her podcast Normalife!, interviewing a great line-up: Ian Schrager, Thom Browne, RuPaul, Bridget Foley, Rick Owens, Venus Williams and more. During the pandemic, she took advantage of the time available and wrote a book for women, I Am Invincible. “When you feel invincible, it means you do things without fear, but you do them with a calculated strategy, right? You also have to be prepared to fail and take away from that failure what you’re supposed to do next. Being invincible means that your goal is to achieve something you haven’t done before, to do something that you feel is important for your life.
jumpsuit by NORMA KAMALI SS23, T-shirt and glasses by NORMA KAMALI, shoes by BALENCIAGA
“I met an ER doctor yesterday; he has saved a lot of lives,” she says. “He somehow knew what I do and said, ‘You’re iconic… I hear the way these women talk about how they feel in your clothes.’ I said to him: ‘I’m sure you feel a stronger energy when somebody acknowledges that you saved their life.’ “And he said sometimes he’ll walk through an ER and someone will say, ‘Hey doc, thank you so much. Do you remember me? You saved my arm. I appreciate it.’ I said, ‘That’s a stretch from saving someone’s arm to someone wearing my clothes.’ But we talked about the impact you can have on somebody’s life in your lifetime… We all have the ability to do that.” Norma has spoken.
Issue 77 of 10 Magazine – FUTURE, LEGACY, HERITAGE – is on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
NORMA KAMALI: ICONS WILL BE ICONS
Photographer MARCELO KRASILCIC
Talent NORMA KAMALI
Text ALISON VENESS
Hair RUTGER at The Wall Group
Photographer’s assistant EDEL KELLY
