Norma Kamali

She is best known for the "sleeping bag" coat, garments made from silk parachutes, and versatile multi-use pieces.

Norma Arraez was born on June 27, 1945, to Estrella C. Galib Arraez Granofsky and Salvador Mariategui William Arraez, a middle class family residing in Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York City. She aspired to be a painter. Kamali attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and earned a degree in illustration. Upon graduating, Kamali worked as a freelance fashion illustrator for a year. She also worked for Northwest Orient Airlines from 1966 to 1967.

In 1969, Kamali opened a boutique with her then-husband Mohammed Houssein Kamali. She became known for her line of clothing made of real silk parachute material, which included the innovation of being adjustable in length and fit by draw string. Kamali designed the red one-piece bathing suit worn by Farrah Fawcett in the iconic 1976 poster and the bathing suit worn by Whitney Houston on the back cover of her 1985 debut album. Farrah Fawcett's suit was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2011. She is one of several designers credited with popularizing the shoulder pad in womenswear in the 1980s and played a prominent role in adapting exaggerated shoulder pads to casual clothes at the beginning of the eighties shoulder-pad era in 1978. She reached a peak of fame during the early 1980s with her 1980 "Sweats" collection, a variety of casual garments done in sweatshirt fabric, most famously flounced, hip-yoked miniskirts called rah-rah skirts in the UK, a style she had first presented in other fabrics in 1979. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kamali was the first designer to create an online store on eBay. In addition to designing clothing, she has also produced a fitness, health and beauty line. In 2008, Kamali produced a collection for Walmart.

After completing a generative AI course at MIT in 2023, Kamali trained an AI to produce clothing designs in her style.

In 1981, Kamali won a Coty Award, called the "Winnie" but formally titled the American Fashion Critics' Award. She received the CFDA Board of Directors Special Tribute Award in 2005, and was awarded the CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, which was presented to her by Michael Kors. In 2019, Kamali received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Pioneer Award at the United Nations in recognition for her achievements in the fashion industry.

In 2010, Kamali received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Fashion Institute of Technology.

Kamali has a plaque on the Fashion Walk of Fame.

In 1968, she married Mohammad 'Eddie' Kamali. They divorced in 1977. She got engaged to her longtime partner, Marty Edelman, in 2020.

Kamali is of Lebanese and Basque descent.