WWD

Norma Kamali Spring 2024

By Emily Mercer

Spring threw Kamali a curve ball — the fabrics she picked out for the season didn’t come in. “Sometimes the universe does you a favor,” she said, finding new inspiration through a stack of her personal denim samples in the office. She photographed the stack and turned it into a collaged graphic print, as seen through a grouping of non-jean jean jackets, dresses, sleeping bag layers, and a new oversized wide, pouf-leg cargo convertible overalls (which was very cool in white vegan leather).

Her collection followed suit with more groupings of ideas, rather than a cohesive theme. First, a selection of Kamali archive nostalgia, seen through new dot-dash bodysuits and tops; playful fringed party attire; pretty, straightforward occasion dresses; a selection of garments with front and back facing elephant prints (a motif she still wears from past collections), and marbled looks in durable nylon Lycra. There were also core bodysuits and catsuits with magnetized saris (connected at the shoulder) inspired by a trip to India a few years ago, and Western garb influenced by the show “1883.”

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Spring 2024

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

If you’re Norma Kamali and life gives you lemons, what do you do? Make a trompe l’oeil denim print, evidently. “The interesting thing about this collection is that I had fabrics chosen, everything done, ready, and none of it arrived,” explained the designer on a walk-through. “The universe didn’t want me to do that because I shouldn’t have been doing that,” she concluded and moved on, cool as a cucumber. And why not? Kamali has many resources at her fingertips.

From her archive, she pulled a marble print and another that featured a giant elephant head. From her memories, she pulled a trip to India. These inspired draped sashes that were attached with magnets to garments to give the wearer an easy on-off option. The TV series 1883 was the starting point for Kamali’s fringed vegan-leather jackets, which fit into a sub-theme of “Old Hollywood, but cowboys at the same time.”

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WWD

Norma Kamali Resort 2024

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Resort 2024

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali has always cast a wide net when it comes to fashion; she was an early adapter on the crossover of sports into ready-to-wear and a wellness pioneer as well. It’s never just about the clothes for her.

This season Kamali was thinking about the why of things. “We talk a lot about excess product, we talk about a lot of the things we [as an industry] are doing wrong. I think we will do more things right if we understand what our purpose is. What are we supposed to be doing? What’s the job here?… We forget the purpose is to make fashion fun and memorable, make it important for people,” she said in her showroom. “If we create collections that aren’t just for each other in the industry but to really change how people feel, I think the industry will have a better time figuring out what to do with all the products.”

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WWD

Norma Kamali RTW Fall 2023

By Emily Mercer

Last season, Norma Kamali focused on the idea of a wardrobe refresh. With fall, she continued with the “complete package” but in autumnal hues — chocolate brown, military green, sand and wood brown as well as timeless prints; “bb” leopard; camouflage, and glen plaid.

“It’s about having a wardrobe that you can get a lot of use out of no matter what else is happening. If you had 12 pieces, including a sleeping bag coat, what would they be? I think it’s probably the most commercial collection. I know that probably sounds like a bad thing, but I’m actually proud of it because I think it’s beautiful and also salable,” Kamali said.

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Fall 2023 Ready-To-Wear

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali continued to build on the wardrobe theme she introduced last season. Work life may be altered, but post lockdown, our lives have once again become more structured, within new uncertainties. This requires new approaches, and perhaps some new and dependable wardrobe items that can be an aid in manifesting our best selves.

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WWD

Norma Kamali Pre-Fall 2023

By Emily Mercer

Following her colorful, occasion-minded spring collection, which was all about using fashion as a way to take control of personal happiness, Norma Kamali’s pre-fall lineup was all about a wardrobe reset.

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Pre-Fall 2023

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Over 55 years Norma Kamali has built a lexicon of signature styles that she parses each season to address the moment. Take the best-selling Diana dress; last season it was offered in party-’til-you-drop neons and metallics; for pre-fall it’s been toned down, appearing in muted shades like bone and lichen that speak to Kamali’s embrace of Zen in the face of a looming recession.

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WWD

Norma Kamali RTW Spring 2023

By Emily Mercer

“Business is — I don’t even understand, you would think we were selling drugs in the clothes!” Norma Kamali said during her spring collection preview, held at her new TriBeCa office space. The designer’s Diana dress and her ruched lamé and mesh “sisters” continue to be bestsellers, so Kamali whipped them up in happy shades of bubblegum pink and lime green (as well as a pretty pearl, gunmetal and neon orange). The same could be said for her machine-washable, printed styles, present for spring in an extension of cable-knit, snakeskin and her hallmark stud patterns (which hugged the body’s curves just-so from the in-depth placement process).

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Spring 2023 Ready-To-Wear

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali has become a “downtown girl” after many years of being an uptown one. Visiting her new West Village space I encountered an army of mannequins dressed in the collection and a designer delighted with her new digs and her balance sheets. “Our business has been just crazy, crazy, crazy. I’m always asking what’s going on? Why do people want this from me now? and I listen to what they want,” said Kamali. Her reading of the zeitgeist is that people want to feel good. “There’s no controlling the world situation, the wars, the government decisions that are being made that we don’t agree with,” she continued. “All of that takes a toll. I never thought I would say this in my entire life, that clothes are the answer, but I think we’re at that point, where there’s very little we can do, but we can get dressed.”

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Norma Kamali Resort 2023

By Emily Mercer

“When I think of luxury, I always try to make it easy to wear so that the style doesn’t become so precious you only wear it once, twice or a few times for special occasions,” the voiceover of Norma Kamali said during a video of her resort collection.

For the resort season, Kamali proposed dressed-up ideas (in silhouette and print) with her signature ease. There were digital jewel print-emblazoned dresses and tops, as well as their standout 3D embellished counterparts on sheer mesh tanks, plus rich holiday-centric cable-knit and plaid fashions, which also were digitally printed.

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Resort 2023

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

With its sparkling beaded tops, velvets, and tartan prints, Norma Kamali’s resort collection feels “extra.” While it’s as wash-and-go as always, this lineup is also determinedly ornate, luxe, and showy. People want to feel good, the designer says, and fashion is a means of escapism. The question is whether that escapism is moving toward something (ie “a return to normal”) or is a now or never proposition (ie “party like it’s 1999” before the world ends).

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WWD

Norma Kamali RTW Fall 2022

By Emily Mercer

“A designer learns through the seasons and years that our job is to have the tempo of what people are feeling,” the voice of Norma Kamali said over her fall collection video.

She echoed this message over Zoom, explaining that right now, optimistic fashions that exude the feminine, and are also timeless, are the key to how women are dressing and feeling.

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Fall 2022 Ready-To-Wear

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali has an optimistic and realistic way of looking at the world and at fashion that has given a longevity to her clothes that many designers would envy. Take the shirred Diana dress: Designed in the 1970s, it was worn by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw on And Just Like That… and is selling like hotcakes. As with everything Kamali designs, this sexy dress can be thrown in the washing machine, and since it stretches, it adapts to many body types.

Through her use of bias cutting and drawstrings, and translation of swimwear aspects like cutouts into ready-to-wear, Kamali has always made clothes that could be described as user-friendly, which means something different in 2022 than it did even 10 years ago. “A lot of the way we shop is through photos on a screen, and the way the light comes through the photos and how eye-catching the photos are, how appealing emotionally that experience is, is really a very modern thought process that many of us didn’t have to think about before,” said Kamali. “So if I have a dark color or something subtle, I have to do something so it pops off the screen.”

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WWD

Norma Kamali Pre-Fall 2022

By Emily Mercer

For pre-fall, Norma Kamali turned out all the stops to debut a celebratory, bridal-forward collection. Although the designer had previously designed one-of-a-kind bridal looks in the ’90s, for 15 years, her pre-fall collection started when the designer had offered to design a princess-inspired gown for the daughter of a close friend. A handful of dress samples later, Kamali (who is also engaged) wanted to expand the assortment to offer the collection for any bride-to-be.

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Pre-Fall 2022

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali is and always has been pro-woman. For pre-fall she’s also pro-princess (bride). The impetus was her own impending nuptials and the assignment to create a dreamy wedding dress for the daughter of a good friend, who happens to be a neuroscientist with fairy-tale good looks.

For about 15 years starting in the mid-’90s, Kamali designed custom bridal looks, including for one Cynthia Germanotta, whose daughter Lady Gaga wears it in her video for “You and I.” This time around Kamali’s offerings are off-the-rack and aimed at a variety of brides (Disney princess, Jessica Rabbit, and so on). “They’re modern, they’re easy to take care of,” said Kamali on a call, adding that they are relatively affordable. “The amount of money you spend on a gown doesn’t necessarily mean that that gown is more beautiful, or it isn’t more fantastical or magical, or makes you feel any better because you spent more,” she said.

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WWD

Norma Kamali RTW Spring 2022

By Emily Mercer

Norma Kamali’s spring collection looked back into her own design history and brought forth modernly printed "Americana comfort clothing."

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Vogue

Norma Kamali Spring 2022 Ready-To-Wear

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

The Norma Kamali parachute jumpsuit and sleeping bag coat on view in the Costume Institute exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” was pulled from her spring 2022 collection, but she first designed these pieces in the 1970s. It’s a decade that parallels the 2020s in ways that go far beyond fashion, she thinks.

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WWD

Norma Kamali Resort 2022

By Emily Mercer

Norma Kamali balanced the ideas of uniform dress with one-of-a-kind, playfully eccentric fashions for resort.

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VOGUE

Norma Kamali Resort 2022

By Laird Borrelli-Persson

Norma Kamali’s not angling to return to the way things were pre-pandemic; instead she’s looking forward to crafting a future using the lessons of lockdown. This designer’s key takeaway is that comfort is here to stay. “You have to feel casual [in] dressy and you have to feel special in casual, and that mix is where the magic is,” she said.

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