EXCLUSIVE: Designer Norma Kamali Talks About Expanding Her Business in the Middle East and the Ups and Downs of Fashion

Norma Kamali could write a book on staying relevant in the ever-changing fashion landscape.

A designer, entrepreneur and innovator, Kamali has proven herself time and again to be a fashion maverick. Kamali has been credited with many firsts throughout her 56-year career, including the sleeping bag coat; sweats as ready-to-wear; parachute clothing; sensuous swimwear, and her jersey knit collections. Focused on accessible fashion, Kamali was one of the first designers to experiment with e-commerce, to feature bar codes to buy off mannequins, to offer a “try-before-you-buy,” program, and to augment her fashion business with a highly successful health and wellness component and Wellness Café.

The 78-year-old designer will be the inaugural recipient of the WWD International Designer of the Year Award at the WWD X Saudi Fashion Awards gala as part of the WWD Global Fashion Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In partnership with the Saudi Fashion Commission, WWD is hosting the Global Fashion Summit, themed “Next Fashion Frontiers,” in Riyadh, where Kamali will be a special guest and featured speaker.

Kamali said it’s a coincidence that she was selected for this award since Saudi Arabia and India have been so much on her mind lately.

The Future

“I’ve been talking to people about India and Saudi Arabia because I think that’s the future. I think there’s a young population, and I think they’re ready for the future. They have such a huge population. So I find that very exciting,” said Kamali in a Zoom interview from her 17,000-square-foot headquarters at 609 Greenwich Street in Manhattan.

Kamali said she does a lot of business in the Middle East. “Where we have developed a really nice business is with some key accounts from Dubai. And they have a big business with Saudi Arabia. I am looking at some opportunities in Saudi Arabia. And the truth is, a lot is going on there. There’s a real energy for building a fashion hub, actually a fashion place, a fashion city that people can go to in the Middle East and they are rivaling a bit with Dubai, and I think they probably are ferocious about achieving that.”

With half of Saudi Arabia’s population under age 30, Saudi Arabia is among the global markets seeing a youthquake.

Kamali believes that she is well-positioned to reach the Saudi Arabian customer. She said that while everybody thinks that her customers are her age, she has two customer groups: 25 to 35 and 35 to 55. But 25 to 35 is her biggest age group.

“Isn’t that amazing?” she said.

She said her customers don’t know anything about her until they learn about her. She has customers from India and the Middle East who she sees via #nkmyway on Instagram where they post photographs of themselves. “And they’re stunning. We also noticed we have a lot of press from the young Bollywood girls. The young Bollywood girls look great,” she said.

Her clothes are attractive “to a certain kind of girl who wants to have a good time. And she likes to shop. She likes to enjoy herself in what she wears. She puts herself together and is confident and has great style,” Kamali said.

Describing what she sees as the fashion scene in Saudi Arabia, she said, “Saudi Arabia in the last 10 years is completely in the present and the future. The girls are wearing leggings and crop tops and driving cars, and Gen Z won’t have a memory of whatever happened in the past because they will only remember this kind of a life. The women are very strong and very smart, and they’re living the life.”

She said Saudi Arabia has all the new gyms — women didn’t go to gyms 10 years ago. She said if a new gym opens in Singapore or London that is great, they’ll have it two weeks later in Saudi Arabia.

“I believe strongly that the fashion that’s created in the Middle East, especially in Saudi, is going to be some of the newest stuff because they don’t have the history. I find that incredibly fascinating,” she said.

Most of her customers in the Middle East are buying her line through e-commerce in Europe. “We have a lot of e-commerce distribution. But we also have distributors in Europe who sell to stores, and we have distributors in different parts of the world who sell to stores,” she said.

Asked how she feels about winning this award, she said, “Well, I’m not sure why, but I got chosen. But all I can say is thank you. I think the universe had something to do with it. I’m thrilled. The timing couldn’t have been better.”

A Global Business

Is it possible that Kamali could actually be more relevant today than she was in her 30s and 40s?

“I don’t know. It’s such a different time because now we’re in a global business,” Kamali said. “When I started, I remember in my 30s and 40s, it was pretty local. And then I had European distribution, and a big Japanese business for a long time. But it’s different now because I can see my customers at all times because of social media. I understand more about them. Before it would be mostly press and editorials, and celebrities and models. But now I can see that, plus what people really look like when they’re wearing my clothes. Not just statistics about what’s selling, but what they look like. You can’t get better information,” she said.

Over the years Kamali has been ahead of the pack when it comes to incorporating technology into her business. She was among the first designers to launch e-commerce (she presented her fall 1996 collection online along with a virtual reality experience simultaneously broadcast for the internet), and offered a try-before-you-buy home service in 1998. The Norma Kamali iPhone app launched in 2009 at the SoHo Apple Store, and in 2010, she introduced ScanLife barcodes that allowed shoppers to buy directly off of mannequins and through her store windows. That same year, she began microsite e-blasts, which became a preferred direct-to-consumer sales method. She installed a 38-by-10-foot LED wall at her Greenwich Street headquarters where she livestreams workouts and films and videos.

So how does she view her relationship to technology?

“Well, I’m addicted,” she said. “I find it personally so exciting. I’ve experimented with parallel universes with friends of mine who are very into technology. I’ve used it in many ways for my company from having a website in the mid-’90s.” She was also part of eBay’s initial distribution. “And I used QR codes. Instead of just having clothes on a rack, I had clothes on display that people could just put their phones up and see the QR, go right to a product page and shop,” the designer said.

Kamali credits her first job working at Northwest Orient Airlines with exposing her to technology.

Tech and AI

“Obviously, I have zero computer skills, graduating from FIT [she graduated with a degree in fashion illustration in 1965] and taking anatomy classes and things like that. But I wanted to travel and I worked first just at flight arrivals. And then I started to become a part of the tour department. And at the time, in the ’60s, the airlines had the most incredible training program for service and for selling. And they were fully into computers,” she explained.

“So we all had a UNIVAC computer.…The computer was just eye-opening for me. I’m sitting in this office with a computer that’s showing me and telling me everything that’s going on on the planes. And I had a revelation that this was going to be the beginning of something that I really wanted to know more about. I just found it incredibly exciting, It made me feel comfortable about anything different from what everybody else was using as a means of finding information.”

She realized that if she could have her own website and communicate directly with the customer, she could do so much better in business. In her own store, she could talk to customers, but now she could see what’s happening in multiples, see it globally and respond to customers, “which is the best education any designer can have,” Kamali said.

Artificial intelligence has also been on her radar. Kamali has been developing an AI x Norma Kamali collection. It’s based on her archive that’s 56 years old. “We’ve taken the archive and we are taking each section of it, and each category and we’re tagging it and identifying it, so that it can be modeled and programmed into the program that I am using for my brand,” she said.

What she does is prompt what she wants. So if she wants to do a swimwear collection or a dress collection, she can program exactly what she would like, without defining completely what it is, but putting in the kind of prompt that will open a generative experience of as many styles of swimwear. She said she has swimwear from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. She puts in the prompt and gets images and a new version, and combinations of things she’s done.

“And they look good. And then I can do AI again and tell it to do more. I’ll ask them to do a variation on it.” She said the program is trained from her archive, and then she’ll “give it a brain wave,” she said.

“And so the more I do that, the more it becomes programmed in my thought process. And then I’m also going to have my teams use the program for things that they might want to see. And then I’m going to get more and more people to be able to use it, whether it’s the sales team or merchandising. Then everybody can review what has been generated.”

She said she has started it very lightly “but this summer we’re going to do more practice on it.” Kamli’s first AI Swim Collection will launch in September.

“So at some point, when I reach 120 and I decide to check out of the universe, my team can literally use this program. And the brand really has a life because I’ve been the only designer [at her company] for 56 years. There’s an authenticity that exists,” said the designer, who was the recipient of the CFDA Board of Directors Special Tribute Award in 2005 and the CFDA’s Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

Tried and True

On the fashion front, Kamali has had many hits over the years that continue to resonate with customers. “My swimwear throughout the years consistently has been a strong part of my DNA, and I still find it amazing that most people know me by swimwear immediately, which I find fascinating but that is the truth. There’s also the sweats, the sleeping bag coat [when she cut up her own sleeping bag after a camping trip] and the parachute clothes [made of actual silk parachutes],” she said.

She recalled how the sweats came into being. As a child, she would put on her brother’s gray sweatshirt from the Army-Navy store to go to the pool. “It was a gray sweatshirt and I was a crazy swimmer. I love swimming and I would swim in the city pools and climb over the fences at night.”

She said she designed coverups and dresses, suits, jackets and gowns and came up with 36 pieces in gray sweatshirting. She called Michael Coady, then editor in chief of WWD, who introduced her to Sidney Kimmel, chairman of Jones Apparel Group, and they formed a partnership.

In 1981, Kamali won a Coty Award for design innvoation for her sweats collection, and the following year won a Coty Award for women’s fashion design.

“It was the first time that I became known globally. And I had already been in business for quite a few years. And that was a good thing because [beforehand] I was able to fall on my face quietly and pick myself up where a lot of designers who get a lot of fame early have a hard time making a mistake in public.”

She said the timing for this active sportswear was perfect. “And I had a sneaker collection and I had a patent for high-heeled sneakers, which I still have. It was sort of the beginning of this athleisure thing that we’re in right now. It has become a typical way of dressing for men and women and kids and everybody. How do you get on a plane without wearing sweats?” she asked.

Currently, Kamali’s wholesale segment is the largest part of her business. “Our direct-to-consumer is building very nicely and obviously a strong part of the customer base that has known me for a long time.” Her biggest wholesale accounts are Revolve, Fwrd, Net-a-porter and Mytheresa. Kamali said when it comes to department stores, she prefers to be on their e-commerce platform rather than in-store.

“It’s good to be in e-commerce. I think e-commerce is a more successful operation. I think it’s easier to run. It’s cleaner. I’ve been more about e-commerce since 2014. Obviously, when COVID-19 hit, we were prepared. We were in the right place at the right time,” she said.

Kamali said she doesn’t have plans to open any stores in the Middle East, but other people have presented a desire to do that for her. “Stores are important and are part of the lifestyle. And I also think e-commerce is important.”

Kamali said she started selling in Europe in 1980 and added Japan and China in 1983, and Canada and Australia all came after that.

Business Challenges

While her business has had its ups and downs over the years, Kamali declined to reveal the current revenue. “I just want to say that I’m a profitable business. And that obviously is a very important factor.”

She said that she’s never had a partner and has been the sole owner of her own business for almost 57 years. “And I’m still in business, and we’re profitable. So to me, that has been my dream, and that’s what I continue to try to do,” she said.

She’s looking at more international business, such as India and Saudi Arabia, as well as places in Asia such as Vietnam. “I spend time in Abu Dhabi. I love what’s going on there. I’m very inspired by it.”

Throughout her career, Kamali’s aesthetic has evolved but she’s always kept an authenticity. “I think everybody has to evolve to stay alive. And you have to learn new things, grow and change in many ways. But I think if you’re authentic, there’s a certain fingerprint that you have that never disappears,” Kamali said.

She said when she looks at fashion, she thinks about what’s going on in a woman’s life. When asked by an employee’s daughter recently what inspired her in her new collection, she said, “My inspiration is the fact that people don’t have as much spending money. And they still want to have a good time when they wear clothes. And I have to think about what she can buy that will give her a good time. But I also look at what’s going on economically and socially in the world.”

Recently she has gotten involved with these “incredible women who are beautiful and extraordinary and they all have disabilities, and they are just unbelievably inspirational.” She hosted a dinner with them at her offices a few weeks ago. “And we’re working on some ideas to bring together more of these women and to talk about some of the things they’re doing and possibilities for them. A lot of them love fashion and obviously there are things in fashion that work for them,” she said.

Physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle remain a big part of Kamali’s philosophy of life. She said she uses the office space for different events and they conduct workouts there, which are livestreamed. The company will also invite people to a breathing class and they host comedians. She continues to do her podcast every week (“Invincible Threads”) where she interviews guests such as Thom Browne, Rick Owens, the Rodarte sisters and doctors on New Age health care.

New York still remains close to her heart. “I’m a total New Yorker, I was born in New York Hospital. I am a true blue New Yorker. At one point, I thought of moving to London in the ’60s. But I said to myself, ‘New York is your place.’ I do feel that the world is much smaller. And there’s so much happening very quickly as we move into the future, and I’m very curious and interested. And it isn’t necessarily just happening in one city or happening in New York.”

She said it’s happening all over the world, and places like Saudi Arabia, “and I want to be a part of it. I’m not sure that New York is on the edge of the future, but I still love New York,” Kamali said.

Asked how she feels New York emerged from the pandemic, she said, “Don’t get me started. You know when you have company [coming over] and you’re not expecting them, and you quickly fix the pillows and do everything. I feel like that’s what I want to do with New York. I want to fix the pillows. Like, what can we do to just clean up and fix the pillows? We’re in a really tough time. I wish there was some magic that could happen. Because when I talk to a whole bunch of New Yorkers and we get together, we’re all like, what can we do?”

As for what advice she has for young designers starting out today, she said, “I really think that fashion needs to be looked at through a completely different lens. I think if you look at the way things are being done now, or the way they’ve been done in the past, you’ll be misled and you’ll be confused. And you may not know what to do. Just the way I was talking about Saudi Arabia. The young designers that don’t have a reference, they’re starting from scratch. But here, I feel if designers are wanting to begin a career or a life as designer, they have to come in and erase any memory and only go for an intuitive sense of how to deal with the present and the future. And not think about what was done before. It’s not going to work.”

Making fashion accessible remains an important priority to her. “I think women are working very hard. They tend to be managing families and children and careers, and they have to be smart about the way they spend their money. They have to be practical, but they also have to feel good and they have to take care of themselves. So there’s a number of things that women have to think about. And I want them to feel good about themselves. I would feel guilty if they had to spend too much money on a purchase because they will feel bad about it later. They have to pay the rent or buy something for their kids….I don’t feel women have to sacrifice feeling good,” she said.

Over the years, Kamali has faced her share of challenges in this business, which they never seem to let up. “It’s impossible to evolve without challenges and some of them have been brutal and kicked me fairly bad. Many times I went to bed crying thinking, ‘will I be in business tomorrow?’ But as you get older, you benefit from some of these experiences, but there’s always a new one, trust me. They keep on coming.”

So what does she love most about being Norma Kamali?

“I love that I have a creative life. That was what I wanted. And that was my dream, and I’m living a creative life,” she said.