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Whatever the perils of shrink or droop, they show no effect on sales. Manufacturer Kimmel figured he would do about $2 million this year in retail business. But Kamali already has grossed more than $10 million in the U.S. and eight other countries. Next year, sales could soar to $24 million. Variety may be one of the answers. No longer just humble gray, the sweats now come in stripes and seven colors. There are short cheerleader-type rah-rah dresses and skirts, harem pants, saucy knickers, long bomber jackets, and oversized sweatshirts to be worn over tights as minidresses or as tunics with pants. For fall Kamali has added bright, bold, billowing flannel jumpsuits and—shades of 7 Love Lucy—Fred Mertz pants with shoulder straps and Ethel Mertz wrap dresses.
Her new dressy holiday line, due in the stores this month, again uses sweat material, this time black-with-gold lurex laced through it. Nearly all her tops have giant removable shoulder pads.
Kal Ruttenstein, fashion director at Bloomingdale's, observes: "Norma Kamali took an obvious American idiom and made it sophisticated fashion. The woman who used to wear a suit and blouse now wears her sweats." And Bergdorf Goodman's Executive Vice President Dawn Mello proclaims: "Norma is queen of the sweatshirt. It's like when jeans started. Norma is the new Levi Strauss."
A dozen years ago, the 5-ft. 4-in., 107-Ib. Kamali began designing her couture line of alluring, often kooky clothes, among them wild, feathered jackets. Today she lets her fantasy run free on extravagant gowns constructed of genuine Tiffany glass beads ($5,000), bomber jackets made of python skins ($2,500), jumpsuits tailored from gold lame ($850). A body-conscious coterie of customers, the sexy avant-garde of fashion, are fanatic followers of Kamali. Raquel Welch is having Kamali design her costumes for her upcoming picture The Swindle, and Disco Goddess Donna Summer wore Kamali on her last tour. Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross are regular customers in Kamali's Beverly Hills Neiman-Marcus boutique.
Scavullo in 1976 chose one of Kamali's bikinis for a Cosmopolitan cover, and since that time she has been known for her sensuous swimsuits. Like a mother hen, she keeps a tight watch on her swim line and handpicks the seamstresses who sew her provocative suits. Says Kamali: "Swimwear is about the most difficult thing to do. It's for an individual's body, and you're responsible for everything, including the cellulite."
Ironically, Kamali once looked with contempt at her present trade. "I thought being a designer was the most superficial goal anyone could have," she says. "It's not like finding a cure for cancer, or being an artist." A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1964, Norma Ar-raez's real goal was to be a painter. But not a starving one. So instead she started out as a fashion illustrator. Wanderlust struck in 1966, however, and she joined an airline as a reservations clerk. On trips abroad, she always stopped in London to pick up far-out fashions, and in 1968 she and Mohammed Houssein Kamali, her Persian-student husband of one year, opened a New York shop of imported clothes.