Norma Kamali Is Wide Open to the Future

After some 56 years in the fashion businesses, Norma Kamali is as surprised by her longevity as anyone.

“My customer is younger and younger, and I don’t know why,” she told the WWD Global Fashion Summit in Riyadh, relating that she’s attended weddings recently where she was surprised to encounter so many young women wearing her designs.

Nevertheless, some of the parents of those women asked the 78-year-old: “Are you still in business?”

The New York designer took the digs in stride, emphasizing the need to stay positive, curious and open to whatever the future might bring.

In a lively, wide-ranging conversation with James Fallon, editorial director of WWD and Fairchild Media Group, Kamali reflected on a career marked by innovative designs, independence and a fascination with technology.

“I love my job. I love having a creative life. I love owning my own business,” she told a female-heavy audience at the KAFD Conference Center. “I am so curious and excited about everything new. I look at the future all the time. I’m thrilled by what’s coming.”

It was Kamali’s first time in Saudi Arabia, but she described it as kismet.

“I am so excited about what’s happening in Saudi, what’s happening in the Middle East, as far as this progressive leap into the future,” she said. “I’m familiar with Abu Dhabi, and I love what’s happening here. I think Arab women are extraordinary. I have to say that because I’m Lebanese. I think they are tough and smart and invincible, and I really connect very well with them. So coming here was very special for me.”

Dressed in a black tunic, top and leggings embellished with silver discs, Kamali came across as the epitome of a self-actualized person, unwavering in her belief that her purpose is to live a creative life, and to serve women, making them “feel good about themselves and look as good as possible.”

Kamali credits her first job working at Northwest Orient Airlines for opening her eyes to the potential of technology with its UNIVAC computers. More recently, social media, and particularly user-generated content, has provided a worldwide window to the end user of her garments.

“People photograph themselves in my clothes, and they look amazing, and it’s the first time I’m able to see who’s wearing my clothes, what they look like, how they style it,” she enthused. “And even though they look different — I mean, it’s pictures from everywhere in the world of beautiful women of all shapes and sizes — there’s a spirit that’s the same, and it’s the spirit that I obviously have in my clothes.”

Asked to describe her customer, Kamali replied: “She enjoys life. She is entrepreneurial in spirit. She enjoys all the things possible for women. And she enjoys being a woman.”

Kamali’s interest in technology has made her a pioneer, opening a website to promote her fashions in the mid-’90s.

“I was so excited I could finally connect to the woman myself and not have it interpreted by buyers and store people that weren’t telling my story in the way I wanted it to be told,” she said.

More recently, she has taken courses on artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is using the technology to interpret her vast design archive.

“I enjoy exploring worlds that I don’t know and then bringing them back and mixing them with what I do,” she said.

To wit: In October, Kamali will release a full collection realized with the help of AI.

She explained that’s she’s documenting and tagging her entire archive, and experimenting how AI can interpret past Kamali designs with specific prompts.

“It’s not like a copy of Norma Kamali: It’s a new something, and I can tweak it. I can play with it. But ultimately, I do plan to live to 120, so when I have to pass on the baton, my team will be trained to be able to use it, too.

“I’m teaching it to think the way I do, to behave the way I do, to kind of use what I think about when I’m creating a collection,” she said.

Kamali noted, however, that “AI is not a creative person, and that’s something that’s hard to replace. AI can support a creative person, can extend a creative person’s possibilities, and the creative person can use AI as a tool.”

She also stressed the need for guardrails that may end up serving an unintended purpose. “I think the fashion industry will benefit from the guardrails, because finally, we might be protected against all the theft of important parts of a brand’s identity.”

Echoing messages delivered during a recent speech at FIT in New York City, Kamali stressed the need for listening and learning.

“There’s always something that you don’t know, that maybe some people are afraid of, but those are the things you probably should be more curious about,” she said. “This is such a difficult time, but it’s also the most incredible time.”

She was alluding partly to the vast ecosystem being constructed to support the burgeoning fashion industry in the kingdom, led by the Saudi Fashion Commission, a branch of the Ministry of Culture and WWD’s partner in its Riyadh gathering.

“I believe we will see from this part of the world, especially from Saudi, some of the most innovative, forward-thinking design,” Kamali said. “Think about the youth in this country, and the young designers about to explode from here onto the global platform of design. They have no memory of the past, really, and they have a reference to their heritage and their families, the sense of family, the sense of these gatherings, the sense of all of this. And they have the future, and they have technology. And you know, they will have the best here. They will have the most support.”

That evening, Kamali was the inaugural recipient of the WWD International Designer of the Year Award at the Saudi Fashion Awards gala that followed the WWD Global Fashion Summit.