Norma Kamali was back on the official NYFW schedule this season, but not with a runway show. The designer’s been there, done that and redirected her energies. “Eventually I said, I can’t live that double life. I used to do shows,” she explained. “But if you do a show, the clothes in the show have to be show clothes. I was making all of these fantastic pieces. They were great, they were fun to make, but I couldn’t support my business doing that. I had to make clothes that real people would wear, and I wanted to make them because that’s what I wanted to wear too.”
Fall’s collection was an embarrassment of riches in terms of wearability and also offers a point of view about the times we’re living in. The Los Angeles fires were raging as Kamali was designing, which got her thinking about the idea of the forest as “a spiritual place.” This “sacred ground” was represented with an archival tree print, which looked like a kind of camouflage, and another of fall leaves in a beautiful medley of colors. Box plaids, the designer noted, are what you wear in the forest and so they were added to the mix.
The many hats, some festooned with feathers, were inspired by Bob Dylan, whose music was playing in the background during our walk-through. Watching A Complete Unknown and Martin Scorcese’s movie The Rolling Thunder Review brought back memories of the singer, who Kamali met through Twyla Tharp, a frequent collaborator. “I was so into his style and how it’s a story,” said the designer, who commented that the simple act of putting on a hat can transform an outfit completely.
Some of the hats were fedoras, which spoke to the collection’s most trenchant theme, “masculine energy.” Not only is that quality on display all around us, but the designer believes it is in women too, balanced with feminine spirit. The designer represented the former with black faux leather of different weights which was cut into supple trousers, shirt-like bodysuits, and long skirts wrapped tightly at the waist. There were coats and jackets too, but, wisely, nothing in an On the Waterfront vibe. Kamali’s idea isn’t that women should dress like men but to channel their inner strength and power whether they are dressed in velvet and a turban or all black and a fedora.
