The Norma Kamali parachute jumpsuit and sleeping bag coat on view in the Costume Institute exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” was pulled from her spring 2022 collection, but she first designed these pieces in the 1970s. It’s a decade that parallels the 2020s in ways that go far beyond fashion, she thinks.
“This time is very reminiscent for me of the way things felt during the Vietnam War, and the tension of the time of the assassinations of great leaders,” Kamali said. “My generation was overwhelmed with emotion about it. We were changing the world, literally, and then the world was being threatened. All of that was really overwhelming. And it feels so much like that today [with] questions about what’s happening with the vaccine, what’s happening with COVID, what’s happening with our identity in the world. We don’t have a handle on it; it’s just happening so quickly, and it’s making us feel uneasy.”
Having carved out a place in fashion by using her talents to “support women on every level,” Kamali is offering some circa 2021 succor with a new collection focused on comfort. “I wanted to make clothes out of these things that hugged you, that wrapped themselves around you and felt safe and good.” She built on the coziness provided by her signature sleeping bag coat by using prints of antique crazy quilts and crocheted blankets on pieces clearly intended for another summer of skin.
Can you say hot pants? “I wore hot pants to work every day with my knee-high boots,” Kamali remembered over Zoom. She started making those abbreviated pieces back in the day, she said, “because I wanted my miniskirt to be even shorter, and to do that it had to be short shorts.” Spring 2022’s quilt print is inspired by the vintage quilts she used for those decades-ago hot pants. “It was so great—the mix of this handcrafted, huggable comfort clothing that grannies were making with these new [silhouettes].”
Anti-war protests inspired the florals in the new collection. “Having a protest and giving flowers out [there] was a new kind of protest; it was a new way to say [that] we want love, we want kindness, we want peace. We don’t want war. We don’t want this confusion. Quite frankly,” Kamali said, “that’s the way I feel now. I just want kindness. I want to give flowers to everybody. I’m feeling that energy.” Bring it on.
