From our FOREVER NORMA editorial spotlighting the sleek and chic woman of 90s Tribeca to our very first visit to her WELLNESS CAFE, OC's obsession with all things NORMA KAMALI is absolutely no secret. And why should it be? The iconic New York designer has brought us everything from the sleeping bag coat to Farrah Fawcett's little red bathing suit to top notch olive oils responsibly sourced from across the globe. For her Spring/Summer 2014 collection, Norma took a chapter out of her own legendary book, revisiting and reinterpreting her iconic 1980 Sweats collection that marked the first time women took sweatshirts out of the locker room and into their everyday lives, transforming conceptions of casual clothing. From fashion to fitness and the constellation of facets in between, Norma's career has focused on empowering women. I caught up with Norma to discuss the evolution of Sweats, her daily workout regimine, and what makes an empowered woman.
Shop all Norma Kamali HERE
Emily Manning: This Sweats collection is reminiscent of your 1980 Sweats collection. Can you describe the atmosphere that inspired the first collection—what motivated you to design in this way? How exactly does this re-launch draw on its senior?
Norma Kamali: The first collection actually was before people were wearing casual on the streets. I swam a lot and after I would put on a grey sweatshirt from the Army Navy store and I always loved it because it would soak up the water and I'd feel warm and I wouldn't feel chilled or anything. I thought, "I wear my grey sweatshirt all the time, why don't I do some cover-ups?" Soon I had this huge collection of everything you could think of for any wardrobe, for any time of day, in grey sweatshirt. And it was from that that I did a partnership with Jones Apparel doing a full out collection starting with grey sweatshirting and then going into variations.
There was an energy in the air for people to dress in a more casual way. Nobody was, there was still kind of this Studio 54 attitude, but there was a subcurrent of wanting to be casual. When the pendulum swings of people wanting to be all the way dressed up all the time, then there’s a need to kind of go the other way, and so this was in the right place at the right time. I did it for a decade, and I couldn’t do another sweatshirt thing again. Then in the last ten or so years I’ve been wearing my jog pants and then I did a capsule collection and the response was incredible. Customers were emailing me with pictures of things they bought from 100 years ago saying, “You’ve gotta do this again.”
So I put the collection together again and I actually think it’s quite different––philosophically it’s exactly the same––but it is quite different from the original collection in that it’s very modern in its simplicity. You can make it your way just by the shoes you’re wearing. My sweats then had shoulder pads and all kinds of stuff going on, but I did have these core styles like the rah-rah skirt and some big sweatshirts. Those were the styles that I saw were the timeless styles, and so I took that from my collection and I carried forward the idea tha