When I started the Sighs and Whispers podcast eight years ago, it had a different name so I have started revisiting the earliest episodes and slowly re-recording the introductions.
The second episode was a conversation with Norma Kamali. A fashion designer with a career spanning fifty years, she is the perfect example of someone who has molded a life of intention and beauty, which are central tenets of the Sighs & Whispers vision.
Her career in fashion is quite remarkable—in an industry where brands are bought up by conglomerates or completely funded by investors, Kamali is still sole owner of her company. She opened her first store with her then-husband on East 53rd street in Manhattan in 1968, importing clothes from London, but soon began designing and producing her own line. Following her divorce in the mid 70s, she relaunched her company in 1978 under the emblematic “OMO Norma Kamali”, which stands for “on my own.” As a single divorcee going it alone without a business partner or investors to fall back on, Kamali was groundbreaking—a true feminist designer at a time when women were still having difficulty breaking into the workforce, let alone founding the companies themselves.
In a 1978 interview—given to WWD before the opening of her OMO store—she laid out her design ethos: “My clothes are for women who have their own strong identity, which becomes more and more apparent through the things they choose to do, as well as what they wear and how they put it all together. Whatever a woman’s look, it should not consumer her or be influenced by anyone else—or even a season.” Norma is truly a woman’s designer—completely engaged with designing clothes that make women feel beautiful yet that also work with how they live. As an active, busy career woman, her designs evolved as solutions for the missing links in her own wardrobe. By not engaging with trends, Kamali has instead defined them—throughout her career, she has sought to stay ahead of the curve in both fashion and technology. Her forays into activewear, sweatshirting and swimwear in the late 1970s and early 1980s were the precursors of today’s multi-billion dollar athleisure industry, while she established one of the first web stores in the early days of the Internet. It's hard not to be inspired when one takes in the breadth of her career and the surety of her vision. Still designing and producing, visit her website to view and purchase one of her easy-to-wear, comfortable and chic pieces.
We discussed her career, the ups and downs of life in fashion, and her invigorating zest for life in the West 56th Street building that housed her store, showroom, offices, atelier and photo studio. After 40 years at that location, Norma moved downtown to a new 17,000 square foot headquarters in 2022. In addition to being at the forefront of fashion tech online, Norma Kamali was one of the first fashion designers to truly understand the power of video when she began making short fashion films in the mid-1980s. In recent years, she has been experimenting with AI in fashion.
Norma is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. She is completely committed to her health, and in 2021, Norma published I am Invincible, a “handbook for women covering fitness, health, beauty, and style, as well as best practices for aging with power.” Seeing how youthful she looks and is in her 80s (just watch the workouts she streams on Instagram!), it’s hard not to be inspired to want to follow her exact regime!
Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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