Norma Kamali on Being Timeless, Observing Culture, and Dancing

of our time. In each conversation, I focus on four different areas from my guest life and career, and during those four courses, I'm gonna dig deep and uncover new insights and inspirations that we can all use to fuel ourselves to push forward. My guest on this episode hung out with Jimmy Hendrix and led Zeppelin in the sixties.

She's remained culturally innovative and relevant for more than fifty years, and she even designed a bathing suit so famous that it sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Please enjoy my delightful conversation with my dear friend, fashion designer Norma Comali. We shared a wall for a long ten years Yes, I opened a restaurant called Town and it was right next to your store. I know you weren't so happy with that construction, crazy with the construction.

I came after you and then we became really good friends. Yes, you came after me. I was like, for my first course, I had to talk with Norma about the Evan flow of culture and how it has inspired her most iconic creations. Today in Norman is selling highly stylish and relevant designs to women several decades her jr. But what most of those women don't know is that the clothes they're wearing are designed by someone who participated in the cultural revolution

of the sixties. Basically, you grew up in Opper East Side in a very small apartment, eating the best food, juicing, going just doing what you wanted to do and being extremely fashionable, and then you landed in the sixties in London. Can you give me just a little background about why

he went to London. I went on a job interview after f I t with my portfolio and this guy who was interviewing me for the job was eating a tuna sandwich with his feet up on his desk and he said, young lady, put your portfolio down, come here and turn around for me. And all I can think of is, my mother wants me to get a job. I better turn around. He has the power in the room. I did. I was so humiliated that I did. I ran out with my portfolio. I got home and I said, mom,

I didn't get the job. At the time, if you looked in the New York Times, you could find a job. So there was a job at Northwest Orian Airlines in reservation. So at one pen Plaza, I sat at a UNIVAC computer. I didn't know how to type. I still don't, And every Thursday after work I would get on a flight and come back Monday morning for four years to London round trip twenty nine dollars a trip, every every week. Every week. We're talking nine sixty four, sixty five, sixties six,

sixty seven. So my first so, so listen to this. I meet a friend of mine from f I T I meet her in Paris and then we were going to go to London. So I'm waiting for her in the lobby of a hotel. I was sitting there and there were these British guys, obviously of some rock group, and they thought I was French and they were talking about me, and I was trying not to show any expression. My friend Betsy comes in and we started screaming and yeah, yeah, yeah,

and they said, oh, you're Americans. And so the name of the band was the Spencer Davis Group. I don't know if you know who they are, but you know the song I'm a Man, Yes, I him and that's and so we went all around Paris that night. They were doing airplane hangar concerts and they said, when you go to London, meet us at this club. We'll get you into this club called the Speakeasy on Margaret Street. Well, the Speakeasy on Margaret Street all musicians, all musicians, and

I was there every weekend. I met Jimmy Hendrix, I met everybody. I met everybody. And my friend's husband was working for the manager of led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck was really good friends. So I was, I was in this place, and I would come back to New York and and then buying these mini skirts and everybody's knees in New York were covered. Nobody if you wore a skirt above your knees, you were prostitute. I came back from London, my skirt. It was like halfway up my thigh and

cars were stopping. People were just saying horrific things to me. But I didn't care because I knew. And so I really got inspired to be in fashion from London, not from learning about fashion, And so those four years were so special. It was a real revolution. Everything was new and London was spectacular. And that memory of thinking that you can do things that you never saw before, because that's how great it is. That memory is so alive in my head, and I'm so happy that I had

that experience to be there at that time. When did you stop going to London every weekend? Well? I stopped because my business grew so much that I couldn't go anymore. I mean, I had a real business at that point. I was designing the clothes. Where were you making them? Normal? I had my own factory. I started with a sample room and then I opened a bigger space, and I hired all the sewers and cutters. And in fact, a woman that works for me now worked for me. Then

she's still with me. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. We have seen so much together. You know, you used to sew a lot, right, You're you're a sewer, which is a lot of designers. Well, I say some are, but there are people that aren't sewers of other So but you so my forte is pattern making and I what is that? Tell us what that is? It sounds like obvious. But so I opened this business, and you were right. I wanted to be a painter, but there I like my mother said, you know, you got to pay the

rent because I'm going to throw you out. So I ended up getting a scholarship to f I T And when I graduated, I said, I really hate this fashion stuff. And I got a job at an airline in the office, brought back clothes, opened up a little shop and sold them. And then I decided I had some ideas of my own and I started to make them myself. And then

I hired a pattern maker. And the pattern maker makes the pattern for what the garment is going to look like and when it gets owned together, and the powdern maker kept telling me what you want isn't possible, and I was like, no, it's possible. I know it has to be possible. So I learned how to make patterns on my own, literally, and I actually am quite good at it, and I love it. And if I were in a competition and for best swimwear a pattern maker in the world, I would feel very good about being

in that competition. The thing is, it becomes your power when when you can do anything you want to do. I can make a pattern of anything in the world my mind can think of, and that what happens to that pattern. So you make the pattern and then you give it to a person to cut it. It gets cut into fabric specific fabric, and then it gets own and then we have a fitting, and there may be things that want to make smaller, bigger, longer, shorter. We

do a little tweaking on it. I must say, I'm very proud of the patterns that don't need any of that. And then we approve it and then it goes into production and we sell them to different accounts like Netta, Porter and Revolve, and then I see it on Pete Bowl and that's that's the best. I mean. One of my favorite favorite all time sightings was the very first skirt I ever made was leather and it was all whipstitched, you know, when you take the leather and circle the

seams with the leather strips. That was the first skirt I ever made, and I sold it and I never expected to see it again. So fifteen years ago, I am walking down the street. It's a summary morning, the sun is shining, and I see this girl who's maybe eighteen. She's wearing this amazing skirt and it's moving so nicely, and I thought, oh my god, that skirt is really beautiful. And as she's walking by me, my heart was like, oh my god, that's my skirt. I know that's my skirt.

I like, there was no question after her. No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't say anything. I was so overwhelmed by it. And what I loved was that I knew, because it wasn't that long ago. I knew that that skirt was handed down by her grandmother or mother, or she bought it in a vintage store, and it might have had another life with somebody else, which is even better. So the joy of knowing that you know this thing lives on. You have always seen something that is different

and fashion for yourself. I remember the gowns that you did for the girls at our restaurant. Town. We dressed every girl in the exact same gown, but it had like five different looks, and the girls loved it, and they loved it because you gave them options, which I find really important. So where did that come from? Why did you decide to sort of like think about things differently. That particular dress is called the all in One Dress.

And in nineteen seventy three, I was wearing tons of vintage clothing, including my clothes, and I sold vintage too, and I thought, I want to design vintage of the future, and so I got this jersey knit fabric, which was really very ahead of its time. It just wasn't as developed those fabrications. And I made probably twelve dresses. Out of those twelve dresses, seven are still on my collection and that one is one of those seven and was

one of the twelve piece collection. The girls at wore that would tell me, I just love wearing this, Thank you so much. No one's ever let us wear clothes so that make me feel sexy, and I was like, you're you're welcome, I mean, And and it was washable. I remember they were saying, oh, thanks because we don't have to dry clean it and we can just wash it and it's so easy. And that's really I mean for me. I don't do clothes that you dry clean anymore,

because especially if you're on a budget. I come home and I just put my clothes in the washing machine. There's something about the sound of the washing machine that calms me at night. As I'm walking through the house, I'm taking my clothes off in the washer, and then I hear and I feel so good. One of the things that I noticed was you came up with a sleeping bag coat. And I love your names of stuff.

It's like so like, no bullshit. It's like, we call it the sleeping bag, we call it the parachute co we call it all in one dress. So how did they come about? And like, I still see him on the streets today, Like, and they're so practical for New York that period, it was really really innovative and creative. And I think that time and the influence of that

time still exists today. The creative concept of it that you can think out of the box, you can do things in a different way, and you can still be classic at the same time, so that that style can have a long life. And like the sleeping bag coat, if you have a style that serves a function. I never thought of the sleeping bag coat as fashion. It was my sleeping bag. I was camping, I had to go to the bathroom. I took my sleeping bag over

me and I walked into the woods. And I as I was walking with my coat of my sleeping bag around me, I thought, when I go home, I have to make a coat out of this, and I did. I took my sleeping bag and I cut it into a coat and I sewed it up. And that pattern is the very same pattern I still use today, and I don't. I didn't waste one piece of the sleeping bag,

which makes it sustainable. It is based on the NASA theory for warmth, where you have two coats with a pocket in between, and the heat from your body exchanges with the cold from outside, and that's how you stay warm. And that coat just keeps living on. I've never stopped making the sleeping bag. Commerce now in commerce, then commerce now is in the fashion is so copied and such. There's so many people that rip you off so quickly. Do you have to copyright these patterns? And how do

you get paid if someone's ripping you off? Well, you can't copyright a pattern. Somebody can copy and just change a little thing I mean, I've gotten copied my entire career, and you know what, I know I have another idea. So I don't feel like, oh my god, that's the end of my life. That person copy my sleeping bag coat.

I mean, there are so many iterations of the sleeping bag coat, and you know what, it just makes me look good because it means it's a good idea that just will not go away, and I just keep selling more of them as a result. So I think that that part of it I reconciled. And then there's this new designer who started in and somebody brought to my attention. She has a website and she has one dress as her total business and it's my all in one dress.

She does the same video of how to use it, and she says she's the designer and the creator of it. And I think to myself, what is she thinking to like not want to be creative and why doesn't she want to express herself? But you think more about the reasoning of why, you know, why why would you do that? Why why not have the joy of your own discovery? So I think there are people who create and there are people who copy, and that's the world for the second course, I had to ask normal more about how

she remains relevant and authentic. How does she stay aware of modern trends while creating classic work over and over again. I know what you do is about staying relevant, and you've stayed relevant, for my god, since years. It's incredible. I mean, but I think a lot of it has to do with authenticity and your eyes are wide open. You definitely acted as if you wanted to break rules right away and do it your way, but remain authentic, and I think that that's something that people pick up on.

I mean, really staying where you stayed relevant by like not listening to anyone basically, Yeah, that's the I I think that's the key, especially with fashion, because there's the flavor of the month and there's the trend that everybody thinks is the hottest thing. But what ends up happening is everybody jumps on the same bandwagon and everything looks

the same. But if you for me, I was always determined to live a creative life, and in order to do that, you have to try to be independent as much as you can and be the final word on on how you make decisions and what you do. And that probably was the most challenging for me. But with out it, I definitely would not have enjoyed what doing what I do, which I still love, and you do that too. We are doing what we want to do.

It doesn't mean it's a stress free life and everything is wonderful everybody, but but you put up with the stress because you know it's your thing, it's your it's how you express yourself, it's your creative life, and we're so fortunate to have that. I mean, think about it, but this is a blessing to be able to do what you love. So I'm forever grateful that, no matter how stressful it was, that I hung in and we managed to to get out the other end. It's not

Sometimes it's bloody and sometimes it's not so pretty. It was blood you know. I love fashion, right, I mean a fashion not now. I'm not a fashionista. I just love clothes. I love style. But I think that I tell people that food and I know this about style. Every twenty years or so, you go back and you pick out one thing that the twenty year olds haven't seen yet, and you bring it back and you make it more alive. You tweak it just a bit, but

it's still classical and that's what I do. There's nothing I do that's not classical. But I look at it like, that's why Town was successful. I took classics and just like put my spin on it. But that's why I love fashion so much, because it's very much mimics food for me, and you you just gotta pay attention and you'll stay relevant when you're in fashion or music, film, food. It's so much reflects the time, and it's really very important to be aware of what's going on at the time.

But it's also what happens is you become better at what you do, you create new classics because you know what can survive and what will be timeless. What happens is when you're younger, the tendency is to be more trend driven, and I think that's a way to start, but then you find that where you're learning about the classic and the classics really hold up and classic. You know, a strapless gown is classic. A classic doesn't have to be a three piece suit. It a classic can be

a number of things. My big joy is to see people who are in their twenties now. In fact, the biggest demographic I have is the thirty five to forty five year old, and the second demographic is the forty five to fifty five, which ties with the twenty need to do. So it's like they're all and many of them I don't know anything about Norm McNally and what I've done in the past. They have no reference and

why should they. So I think it's great that they see me and think of me in a completely different way, in a way that relates to today, which is great. And again, you have to be classic, but you have to really be aware of what's going on now. If you take Covid for example, when Covid started, when we were in lockdown in March, our business was down sev there was absolutely nothing going on, and luckily a huge

portion of my business is e commerce. So what I learned was we're going to be indoors, We're gonna be casual. We're not I don't I don't think I had shoes on for like six months. And so if you're home, you want clothes that you could just throw in the

washing machine, that you feel super comfortable in. And so we just went crazy making a bunch of things that were really comfortable and very affordable because you know a lot of people weren't sure if they would have a job, and without paying attention to that, and without being mostly on e commerce, which means you have to be relevant to what's going on in the time. So twelve years ago, actually more than twelve years ago, I realized I have to get out of the department stores. I have to

be on e commerce. And I'm so glad I did that. So for you too, it's it's what people want to eat, I mean, what they're thinking about, how they want to live, how they're going to prepare food at home. Now what are you telling people? How how do you support people who are all of a sudden cooking more at home than they ever did before. For our third course, Norma told me all about her history with wellness, which began as more of a family annoyance than a personal passion.

Is your mother creative like yourself? My mother was incredibly creative. She could do anything. She painted, she's so she cooked. If we went to a restaurant and she liked whatever it was that she had, she would figure out what the ingredients for to make it. She was very, very creative in every way. We've lived in an apartment that was about nine by five. It was the smallest apartment in New York and my bedroom was this little room

off the kitchen. And she had a juice or you know those big juice that looked like a car engine. She had that in the on the counter right next to my bedroom. And she would start with those carrots at six o'clock in the morning and it was like the whole apartment would shake. And so she was using really early. She was into herbs. She had a garden.

You know, this is New York City we're about. We're about the New York a section of New York called Yorkville and Upper East sided in the eighties, and it's actually seventy seven Street between York and Cherokee Place where John J. Park is. I had a lot of beer, a lot of beer housing in in all that schnitzel, Oh yeah, I had. It was an Irish neighborhood and then on one end of it was German on the other side, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian on the other end. So

it was, you know, New York. It was great growing up in New York at the time. Where did you grow up, Jeffrey. I grew up in Worcestern, Massachusetts. It was a mixed name, but it was tons of Portuguese, in Irish Catholic, and we're ar means I think we're the only Armyans in the middle of that. Well we were clearly, No, clearly. People would say what are you and I'd say Lebanese and they would say, oh, is

that the same as Italian? I'd say, yeah, well, is that the given name when you came, when your parents came here? Nor a lot of my whole family changed their names and they came here, they came with another name, and really and they changed to Williams because it was very American. Yeah, so comally is my ex husband's name, which is Iranian. My father was Basque and his name was Marya Taggy and my mother's name was Dwahi. So not names that roll off the tip of your tongue.

Was your father Lebanese? Basque? Wow, Spanish Lebanese. That's just the basket of food. I'm smelling that bash in that basket is the most fabulous vegetable on all the Lebanese staples. And cusa And you know, I made cusa this summer, probably more than I've ever made it. And it was. It's incredibly time consuming, but it gives you enough food for four days. Lebanese food is so healthy and great. I mean, Lebanese food is beyond delicious. As you know,

you've been growing. You went into wellness in the early eighties, but you've been you've been juicing. Your mom has been juicing with that cadillac of juices since you were a kid. But that was really you were very much grew up like sort of every Lebanese Armenian person grew up. Food was the center of the world. And whatever else you did for living, you did so you could afford the food to eat. So I got a great package today.

And so a friend of mine has an olive orchard, as you know, my my olive orchard searches has an olive orchard in the south of France, and she's doing her harvest now, and so she always picks the best kind of combination of olives for me, and so she usually sends me just when they're doing the harvest. She sends me three big leaders of olive oil, and she sent a whole bunch of smaller bottles so I can

taste to pick the ones I like. Well. The package arrived today and all the small bottles were broken, and there's olive oil everywhere. I mean, and all I've wanted to do is get some bread and clean it up. I know I'm devastating, sad, that is so said, But let me ask you a day in the life of Norman now, because you get up talked about your health and regimen. Because looking at you through you've always looked amazing. I can't believe your seventy five. It's just kind of seventy.

You look great, you sound like you feel great. I do, I do. So what do you do to stay hell? First of all, sleep is super important. I get eight hours sleep. Not everybody needs eight hours, but I do. So I go to bedter arl A, and I wake up early. I meditate in the morning. It's really helpful for me. I either work out in the morning or at four forty or four forty five every day. My diet is very simple. I have vegetables and some fish

and avocado smoothies, berries, real simple. I take supplements and I'm I work very hard, and I learn new things all the time. And I think learning something new all the time is critical for mental health and well being and I challenge myself a lot. I mean, it makes life more fun, and sometimes many times you make mistakes and things what you would like to happen doesn't. But the process is really important. And one thing that I

learned from women much older than I am. I did a survey and I interviewed women in their nineties and one hundred and over a hundred and the one thing they all had in common, the ones that were really living in good shape, is they all dance. They've loved to dance and they continue to dance. And I'm so happy because I love to dance and I just can dance all the time. If you dance, you can't hide how you feel. Right when people dance, they really expose

who they are, all of it, and it's great. So I think dancing is a very important part of that whole prescription. For our fourth and final course, Norma generously shared some of her timeless wisdom for the next generation. You had a mentor, I'm sure, but you now have the ability, with all these things out there, to mentor other people. Give me your idea of mentorship because you're in such a fantastic world and now you have your

billy to sort of sit back and manage mentorship. Tell me about how you do that and what what's important to you. So I just wrote a book that's going to be coming out in February. And the book really

is a handbook for women. Tips on everything that I've learned from being an entrepreneur to what it's like to age with power through the decades, healthy lifestyle, beauty, tips on sleep, diet, exercise, and I put it together like a handbook so that if you were I remember when I was twenty, my mother said to me, Norma, it's all downhill from here on out. And I literally I started crying. I really felt like, oh my god, I'm going to be old now I'm twenty and I'm not

a teenager. This is terrible. And she was so cruel, and I thought, you know what, I know that I'm not the only twenty year old who feel who felt like they were getting old. And so the concept of aging with power really starts at twenty and how you decide to live your life and how you get from twenty to thirty, And then thirty is another huge, big, big, big crisis point in a woman's life, and then forty

is another, and fifty is another. And so each decade has so much information, so much happened, so many great learning experiences that help us evolve and become more powerful in ourselves. But it's always good to have tips and advice, whether it's about what kind of workout to do when you're in your twenties versus your seventies, what kind of food, I mean, even if it's making a salad, that you make it yourself, that you put the ingredients, sin that

you you do those kinds of things for yourself. Self love tends to sort of subliminally spread out, and you then attract people who will love you too. When you don't love yourself, you attract the wrong kind of people. And and and it's really important to take care of yourself and to think about that at twenty in every decade after that. And so I've mentored so many people, obviously, so many people in fashion and people who want to

have their own businesses. But I think I would have loved a handbook get you know, going through my twenties, thirties, whatever. And the fact that I could put this together makes me feel so good because I do think when you read it when you're twenty and you read thirty again when you are thirty. It will have so much more meaning.

So it's the kind of book I hope gets all rippleli It's a it's a softcover book, so you can sort of use it a lot, and I think passing it on to like all your girls can read it at different points. I'm so happy with it and I can't wait to share it with women, and I think there'll be something that everyone can find in there to use as a tip, a tool, a solution. So coming soon. I am invincible, right, that's the I am invincible. That's

a great title. Norma, what a special title. Well, when women feel invincible, as you know, because you've been around a few invincible Lebanese women, they can get it done like nobody else can get it done. So if a woman feels good about herself, she truly is invincible. And the point is we're not invincible every day, but we want to increase the amount of times we feel invincible. And so that's the hope of the book. That is

such a great little phrase. And I loved what you said before about taking care of yourself and loving yourself. Loving yourself doesn't mean, like you know, do everything No, it doesn't mean that. All I means imagine that you're responsible to take care of yourself and it's someone else and you are you're responsible for that person. Treat yourself like that and it really puts it into perspective. My question to you is who do you really really fires

you up now? Who's doing things that you, as as a successful entrepreneur, really respect and really wish there were more people like that When I hear somebody's story about what they do, and there are some great ones. I'm fascinated by ceramics now, and there are so many brilliant sculptors and designers for the table and that is sort of where my interest is of learning, well why did she decide to do ceramics in that way? Then I

feel connected. When you know that there's a craft involved in how things are made and the story that goes behind it, you really are invested in in why that has to be a part of your life. So we're gonna move out to the beach and in putting things together for for the house. I'm a minimalist anyway, So all you need is a table of bed chairs and a giant chooser. We have plenty of those do so neutri bullets and I that's I have all of me. But but bottom line is, I'm just thinking about the

craft of each of those pieces. I just want them to be so beautiful in the simplest way. Not a lot, but just really great things and really good food. There's a very few people I know it's that are relevant. You know that you can name them. There's the Drexlers, There's Martha Stewart, there's you. And the reason why they all stay relevant I know them very well is they're completely into their humble They're egotistical, without question, but they're

so curious and they just can't stop. I wish we had some food in front of us and we were having I know, I wish. Thank you so much for sharing their afternoon with me. It's been I'm grateful for your time. Thanks very much for listening to Four Courses with Jeffreys and carrying a production of I Heart Radio and Corner Table Entertainment. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasciotis. Four Courses is produced by Jonathan Hawes Dressler. Our research

is conducted by jess Lynn Shields. This episode was edited and mixed by Joe Tisdall. Our talent booking is by Pamela Bauer at Dogtown Talent. This episode was engineered by Margaret Scarion and Jonathan Haws Dressler and special thanks to our entire team Margaret Scarion, Jared Keller, Tara Halper, and Molly Swanson, without whom this would not have come together. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows