Norma Arraez was born in 1945 in New York to a Basque father and Lebanese mother. She studied illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology, worked as an airline reservations clerk (which allowed cheap London flights), met and married the Iranian student Mohammed "Eddie" Houshmand in the mid-1960s, and opened the small boutique Kamali on East 53rd Street in 1967. She separated from Houshmand in 1977, kept the name, and renamed the company OMO Norma Kamali — "On My Own."

The Sleeping Bag Coat

In 1973, camping with friends in upstate New York, Kamali zipped herself into her sleeping bag in the morning and walked around the campsite wearing it. She took the silhouette back to her studio, adapted it into a hooded, full-length, down-filled outerwear piece, and released it that winter as the Sleeping Bag Coat. It has remained in continuous production since; the silhouette was widely copied and became, in various forms, the long puffer coat now standard in every mass-market wardrobe.

The Swimsuit

In 1976 the photographer Bruce McBroom photographed Farrah Fawcett for a poster reportedly conceived as a modest pin-up; the commissioned pose would be modified according to what the photographer and subject agreed to. Fawcett wore a red one-piece swimsuit Kamali had designed. The poster sold twelve million copies. The swimsuit is, arguably, the single most recognisable single-garment image of the 1970s.

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I design clothes I want to wear. I always have. I do not understand the alternative. — Norma Kamali

The Sweatshirt Dress

In 1980 Kamali created a collection entirely from grey fleece sweatshirt fabric — the material until then reserved for athletic training gear — and presented it as luxury ready-to-wear. The Sweats collection, priced between $28 and $95, was bought by Bloomingdale's in volume and inaugurated the category now called "athleisure." Kamali has continued to produce the sweats line, in slight annual variation, for forty-four years.

She continues to operate her Midtown boutique personally; the business remains privately held and unlicensed. The Brooklyn Museum's 2018 exhibition Norma Kamali: Hello was the first retrospective mounted for her.