Hardware Podcasts

Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali (2021)

How I Built This · 9 Dec 2024 · 1h 29m

What this episode covers

Fashion designer Norma Kamali explains how she built a 50-year career starting from a basement shop in New York, leveraging cheap airline flights to source London fashion, and designing iconic products like the sleeping bag coat and the red swimsuit popularized by Farah Fawcett. She details the painful dissolution of her partnership with her husband Eddie, who mismanaged funds and cheated, forcing her to restart with only $98. Kamali discusses her strategic pivot to licensing with Jones Apparel for her sweatwear line, her decision to leave that partnership to maintain quality control, and her later collaboration with Walmart to bring high-design comfort wear to mass market.

Most relevant to

founders before launch and companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Jones Apparel, Walmart, Bloomidales, Northwest Orient Airlines
Products
Norma Kamali, Sleeping Bag Coat, The All in One
Also
Farah Fawcett, Bette Midler, Smithsonian Museum, FIT, Time Magazine, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Dandies, The Speakeasy, Spencer Davis Group, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Bill Cunningham, Raquel Welch, Cher, Bianca Jagger, Ian Schrager, Studio 54, Sydney Kimmel, Joan's Apparel, Women's Wear Daily, Halston, Eddie Kamali, OMO, I Am Invincible

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