YouSaid · the spoken record

Norma Kamali

lines on the record: 96
first: 2021-02-01
most recent: 2021-02-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right. So when we moved in to Madison, I thought if we're on Madison Avenue, I have to do different clothes. I have to grow up. I have to learn how to make really beautiful well-made suits and dresses. So I started to do suiting, but classical suiting. And I was making suits for Raquel Welsh and Cher and everybody. So it really was the right decision to make, the right place to go. And that period of time in New York fashion was very creative and it was one of my very creative times as well.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he took a ton of photos, and that's when we became friends. And he said, Dearie, I'm telling you something. They're going to come back and understand what you're doing. Wow.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In New York, in the 60s, it was incredible. And so we invited all of these people, including Bill Cunningham. And so I had clothes that looked like this, let me explain what this was. I had big polka dot ruffle jackets. I had gold lemme caprice. I had platforms shoes. I had clothes that nobody's, in fact, stretch was not available in fabric so the stretch I was using was actually girdle and circus fabric. And I use circus fabric to make these pieces. And so this is the tone. This is not what anybody was doing. So all of these fashion people come. Bet is sitting on a piano with a microphone. And she's saying whatever she wants. And the people are looking at my clothes like I lost my mind. This is just totally.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is my first fashion show. So she said, what should I say? I said, I don't care. Anything you want to say when you see the clothes. You just say whatever you want to say. So we were in this mansion of a customer's boyfriend's aunt was selling it or something”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know what you can do. I'm going to do my first fashion show. And at the time, fashion shows were narrated. People talked about the clothes and the fashion show. So you had a narrator. So I said, I want you to narrate my fashion show. Better Middler.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, she had brown. Hair like to her shoulders and she was wearing vintage that was falling apart on her. And in the middle of her act, she stops and says, wait a minute, who are you people and where did you get those clothes? I need to get those clothes. And so after the show, I met with her and she said, I have to get these. I should have no money. Can I work for you? I'll work in your store, whatever, but I just don't have money. So I said,”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Bet Middler started around the same time we started, and we heard about this girl who was funny and an amazing singer, and she was singing in this little dive place. And so this one night we're at this club and we're sitting right up front by the stage, tiny stage. And this girl comes out and she is such a good singer and she's hysterically funny.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but I'm obviously glad I didn't because I would have had a certain imprint that would have worked against. What I really felt akin to. It was very easy for me to envision what I felt should be next.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, not the rhinestones I did as tops, but the hot pants were mostly velvet, appliques, and lots of beautiful colors together. I would do palm trees and scenes. Kinds of designs like that.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, hot pants, don't forget we're talking mini skirts, right? And how do you get a mini skirt shorter than mini? It has to be shorts. We're all wearing boots that just come below our knees. We're sort of having that proportion. And so they were little tiny shorts. They weren't obscene. They were very cool. Long legs with boots, and everybody looked like they had long legs, and I made them, what I did was I treated them as pieces of art. So I would do appliques and designs on these little tiny shorts.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing that got a lot of attention and that, I mean, I'm not going to take credit for being the first to do it, but I don't know anybody else that was doing it at the time with hot pants.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And of course, Eddie sold it for some whatever ridiculous amount of money, I thought. And so I had started to accumulate the majority of the stock slowly became my designs. And in a very short time after the clothing was primarily mine, I had a full page in vogue and I had good size page in bazaar and that was beyond belief because I thought somebody is going to find me out. I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I don't have a clue. And I have a full page in Vogue and Bazaar. This is nuts.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if there is a term for what the clothing was at that time. To be honest, they were very creative, mainly one of a kind pieces handcrafted. I did a lot of snakeskin clothing. I did a lot of suede and dough skin hand whip stitch skirts with different shapes and flares. I did the very first suede skin skirt that I made. I hand whipped stitched. You know, you just take a whole puncher and you punch everywhere and then you stitch it together. With strips of suede. And I remember making that skirt. I put my heart and soul into it and I was so proud of it.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started to make some things and my mother helped me because, as I told you before, she was great. She made costumes and beautiful clothes. And I really didn't know how to sell. I didn't know how to make a pattern. I didn't have any of those skills. My mother and I through my growing up would work together or say, mom, can you make these pants? I want them to do this, this, and this. And she would make them until she stopped making things that she didn't think were good for me to wear. So she didn't want to make them. But we did do a lot together before this. So I asked her to help me put together some of my new ideas. And that's how I started it. So we started to do some things together. And I would put them in the store to see how they would do, and they would do really well.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I realized then also that this was time that it was getting very hard to do both and it just had to make a decision. They didn't push me out in a few months after that I decided it was time to go.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I go walking up and they take me into a room and they open the Time magazine and they slap it down and said what is this? And I said, oh wow, I didn't even see it myself. Like, wow. I was so excited and scared at the same time. I didn't know how to react. They said they frowned on that, and I said, I understand.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you asked me before did anybody know at Northwest if I had this company? And nobody did until. Magazine decided to do a story on snake skin and how snake skin was becoming the accessory or whatever. And I had snakeskin wallpaper in the store and I was making at that point I started to make some things and I was making snakeskin fests and shirts and stuff like that. And so they came to 53rd Street and they photographed Eddie and me in some snake skin in front of our store and it got into Time magazine and one day this buzzer starts going off from behind the glass wall at the front and Norma Kamali come to the front.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then he would say, I would say to him, Eddie, I think this is way too much money to charge for this. And he would say, I'm going to sell it. You'll see. I'll sell it. And I was like, no. And he would. So then I just thought, well, I don't know what I'm talking about. So I'm just going to be quiet.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, he was incredibly handsome and incredibly charming. And he left Iran when he was 11 and was in boarding schools in London outside of London until he came here to go to college.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so people looked at shopping as sort of a sport or a sort of a thing that you did. So couples would get dressed to go shopping and word would get out. It would almost be like going to art galleries, right, where people want to go see what's going on. And couples of all ages, all types of people would come and shop and a lot of the fashion magazines, a lot of the stores, you know, big department stores would come to see what we would do. But we sold things to people of all ages. I mean, I still have people who are in their 80s now who are telling me they wore my clothes. And I think it's so funny. Here's somebody who's 86 who is telling me. Me, she wore my clothes, and I thought that's pretty fab. That's really good.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It happened over a period of time, and I think they sort of got used to it. And I never got sent home. People would get sent home, but I was really good at selling tours, tours to the Orient. I mean, I really... Made some big bucks for them, and I learned, I have to say, I learned how to sell through that job. I learned how I learned service, sales. It was a great learning experience for me.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a good question. I kept it a secret, but the interesting thing was there were very strict rules on dress code at all airlines. Very strict, not uniforms, but you had to wear nude stockings, low heeled shoes. And I took advantage of the fact that I was really good at my job. I had a feeling I would not get fired if I wore, say, a wig or a boa around my neck.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was obvious to me that more and more people were asking me to bring clothes back. And I thought, I don't know. Maybe this is a good idea and having a shop would sort of solidify what I'm doing. It would, you know, make it have a purpose not to just be sort of like a cattle car coming back and forth with clothes. And the good news was because Eddie was a student, he would have time off that he could work in the store and sell, and he was great at selling, very charming. And while I was at the airlines, he was selling the clothes in the store.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I just didn't know better that you should, I mean, I was just, oh, this sounds good, and I just did it. And I did that. For a very, I mean, four years. Me time.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he was a student here. He was studying economics. He was one of a flood of Iranian students That came during the Shah's time So I would go to London, and it was pretty early on that I started to bring back clothes for friends of mine who were saying, Got to get me this, that. And so I would bring back these little dresses from Biba and bus stop and all of those shops in the garment bag. And I got those with the sort of expandable sides. And I literally, it would be like I was carrying a body through my carry-on.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His name was Mohammed Hussein Kamali, and his spoken name was Mansur and some of his friends would call him Eddie. And I love to dance. And That opened that was a very small club, and it turned out that I knew the DJ. And he was like, oh, mom, I'm so glad you came. And he said, they're going to have dance contests here. And I think you should enter the dance contest. And I was like, I don't know. And he said, yeah. And I know a guy that's a really good dancer that you should dance with. And they have prize money that you could win. So he introduced me to Eddie Kamali. And of course, we won the dance contest. So that in itself is enough reason to get married at 19.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when I came back and I would walk in the street with a miniskirt, cars would screech to a halt. It was shocking. And people would say the most ridiculous things like, you know, either that you're a prostitute or what do you, what... But the shock of showing your knees.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely different. I connected right away with it. I felt that that was where my soul was. I was totally Comfortable with it. So when I talk about London being gray, you think of these tweed coats and the hats and gray London. This color bursting literally bursting, and the music blaring out of the stores, it was art in expression in every way that you could think of. Film, music, fashion for sure. So much had just flipped and went against the grain of anything that had happened before. So, when I would come back from London with my skirt very short, mini, nobody had been wearing mini skirts before that.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had men's clothes, women's clothes, they had a motorcycle in the store and a car engine. And I actually have a photo of four of us outside on King's Road, Parry Match came and did a colored double page spread of all of us dressed in the clothes from Dandy. And it's hysterical. It looks like it's a costume party, but it wasn't a costume party. It was what we were really wearing. And the clothes were great”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A friend of mine at the airline suggested I stay at a boarding house off Kings Road for $6 a night. So I did. This was when King's Road was all grey except for a few stores that just burst color up the walls outside Dandies, which was the name of the shop, was one of those stores.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Jeff back, yeah. Jeff Beck was a very good friend, and then And at this club, I met these two guys who were really nice, and one of them said, you're going to really get along with my girlfriend really well. Tomorrow come meet us at our shop. And so they had a shop and the stones were partners with them in the shop.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, I got you. Okay. And they said when you guys come back to London, there's a club called the Speakeasy and we'll get you in. So we said, sure. And when we got back to London, we, of course, went to the Speakeas, Eon Margaret Street. And this was this club, this private club, where all of the rock people, everybody, I got to meet Jimi Hendrix and everybody else.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my first trip, I did a stop first in Paris. I met my girlfriend in Paris that was at FIT with me. And we met in the lobby of her hotel, and I was waiting for her. And at the same time, there was a rock group from London in the lobby. And so they thought I was French and they were talking about me. And I was really trying not to divulge that I knew what they were talking about. And so my friend Betsy came and of course we see each other and we're screaming and they started laughing and they said, oh, so you're an American. And it was the Spencer Davis group. I don't know if you know who they are. You know the song I'm a man. I'm a man. Yes, I am.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I was agent 1006. I still remember And it Northeast or an Airlines, may I help you? I mean, I'm still in my, you know.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was a reservation specialist and basically a clerk and I worked in this big room with desks all in a row facing a big glassed in walled office and every single call was monitored and people were in there with headphones listening to how we handle our calls.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I, of course, didn't want to be a stewardess, and I had zero office skills, but I went for the job because I thought I want to travel. That's what I want to do. I want to see the world. I don't want to do this. And so I went for the job shockingly I got it. The next thing I know I'm working at a Univac computer in the 60s besides education, airlines were the first ones to actually commercially use computers.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Annie said to me Come here and turn around for me. And I just there was this white noise and I thought, what does that mean? And he's the power in the room and I hear my mother's voice saying, you better get this job. You better get a job. And so I turned around and I just was so embarrassed and humiliated. And I ran out of the office. I grabbed my portfolio and I remember my portfolio tearing up my stockings and I'm clip-clopping on my pumps and I'm feeling and crying and so devastated. So when I got home, my mother said, well, did you get the job? And I said, no, I didn't get it. And I got a New York job. Times, which is where they had a big section for jobs that were available, and I saw a job at an airline. And at the time, Pan Am, TWA, all of these airlines were the apple of the time, right? Those were the jobs you wanted.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. So I was so excited to be graduating and hopefully at this job. And I walk in and he's got his feet up on his desk. He's eating a tuna sandwich. And he tells me to put my portfolio down. I was wearing a little black dress below my knee, low pumps. My hair was back in a bun. I was very low key.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even the department stores at the time would copy the collections and put them under their store brand. So if you look at vintage clothes, you'll see in a lot of the labels the store that carried them not necessarily the manufacturer or the designer because that was the way it was done. So the store was really the brand. And I want to add to that women in the workplace in the 60s think madmen again. Most of the women were secretaries, assistants had those kinds of jobs. So I just thought if I can get a fashion illustration job at a company or at a newspaper or a magazine that would be fine. I would be happy with that. And so my first job Interview was in the Garment Center at a manufacturer. Unfortunately, it was a difficult experience. It was an objectifying experience.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'm first of all, let's put this in perspective of the early 60s. It wasn't until the 70s that being a designer in a design house was an American concept, right? So the jobs that you would get in the 60s would be manufacturers who knocked off your European fashion.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was able to really study anatomy in a big way. I used to take a lot of courses on anatomy outside of FIT. And from that, I really understanding the body, the movement of the body, the muscle over the bone and the skin over. It all comes together.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. And I did not like that at all. I found it very restricting. And I was obsessed with vintage films from the 30s and 40s. So I was already going into these sort of secondhand stores. They weren't called vintage stores at the time. Right. And I would find these clothes and wear them. And I was just off the grid. Like nobody got me. And I didn't study fashion. I didn't study pattern making. I studied fashion illustration. And this was at the time there were actual jobs that you could get in fashion illustration. Now, I mean, people probably don't even know what that means as far as an advertising style.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I decided on FIT because my mother was very clear that she didn't think painting was actually going to help me pay the rent because she wanted. So I went to FIT to see where that would take me. But you have to know that I hated fashion because it was Madman time, right? That girdles, guarder belts. Cone bras, the whole thing, and everything was matchy”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, no, because the house was about two feet by three feet. So there was just enough space, let's say, really tiny space. In this neighborhood, we had a community house that we would go to after school, and that's where I did a lot of painting. I enjoyed sitting by the river and sketching. It was such a happy place to just see a beautiful view and being able to sketch it.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mother always had an easel with oil paints where she was in the middle of an oil painting while she was cooking some incredible dish that she just created. She made costumes for the plays that we had in the neighborhood for all the kids, but beautiful research costumes. And so I thought that that's what everybody does. And so I was drawing very early. I was doing creative things for as long as I can remember. And it was great satisfaction for me.”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I started to make some things and I would put them in the store to see how they would do and they would do really well. And so the majority of the stock slowly became my designs. I had a full page in vogue and I had a good size page in Bazaar and that was beyond. Belief because I thought somebody is going to find me out. I don't know what I'm doing. And I have a full page in vogue and bizarre. This is nuts. I don't have a clue”
2021-02-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Norma Kamali: Norma Kamali · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT