Omo Norma Kamali

OMO Norma Kamali is the label of New York designer Norma Kamali, born in Manhattan in 1945, who opened her first shop in 1967 and renamed the business OMO, short for "On My Own," after her divorce in the mid-1970s. She is best known for the sleeping bag coat, the 1980 "Sweats" collection and the red one-piece swimsuit Farrah Fawcett wore in her 1976 poster. Swimwear that doubles as bodywear remains at the center of the brand, which is why it sits in an encyclopedia of intimate apparel.

A basement shop and a name change

Kamali started small. Wikipedia describes the first shop, opened in 1967 with her then-husband Eddie Kamali, as a nine-by-ten-foot basement space in Manhattan. In 1974 the couple opened a shop called Kamali on Madison Avenue. When the marriage ended, Wikipedia dates the divorce to 1975 in one passage and 1977 in another, she kept the business and gave it a new name that said exactly what had happened: OMO, On My Own.

In 1983 she bought and redesigned a building at 11 West 56th Street as the brand's headquarters. The company's own site now describes a 17,000-square-foot space in New York that houses both the store and the company offices. Kamali remains the sole owner of Norma Kamali Inc.

The inventions that made the name

Kamali's reputation rests on a run of ideas from the 1970s and early 1980s that turned utility fabrics into fashion. The sleeping bag coat, a quilted down coat that wraps the body like the camping gear it borrows from, dates from 1973. She worked parachute silk into garments with adjustable drawstrings, so a single piece could be ruched to different lengths. She is credited with being the first designer to use Velcro for removable shoulder pads, a detail that defined the silhouette of a decade.

The 1980 "Sweats" collection was the most influential. It took gray sweatshirt fleece, a gym fabric, and cut it into skirts, jumpsuits and dresses, including the short flared rah-rah skirt. The brand's own history calls it the introduction of sweats as ready-to-wear. Forty years before the word athleisure was coined, Kamali was selling the idea in a Manhattan boutique.

The swimsuit on the bedroom wall

For swimwear history, one garment matters above the rest. Kamali designed the red one-piece bathing suit that Farrah Fawcett wore in a 1976 poster, which became one of the best-selling posters ever printed. The suit was donated to the Smithsonian in 2011. Its power came from simplicity: a single strong color, a body-hugging fit and almost no decoration.

The brand says it developed swimwear and active sportswear as lifestyle clothing in the 1980s. That framing still describes the line. The current swim collection runs to about 85 listings, and the house's own product copy files many of its one-pieces under the same instruction: wear as swimwear or as a bodysuit.

Bill, Diana and Marissa

The core styles carry first names and return season after season, marked on the site as "Classic NK swimwear." The Bill is the signature: a halter top with a sweetheart neckline and shirred detailing, sold as a Bill Bra with a high-waisted, full-seat Bill Bottom, or as a one-piece Bill Mio. The Diana is a one-shoulder, asymmetrically draped style with shirred sides. The Marissa is a slim one-piece with a deep scoop neck, sides cut away to the waist and a very high leg, the most dramatic cut among the classics.

Around them sit a strapless Bishop, a Johnny D bandeau top, string and criss-cross triangle bikinis, an "Invisible" range held up by clear straps, and recent versions covered in silver or gunmetal studs. Fabrics are nylon or polyester blended with Lycra, which the brand says gives up to two inches of four-way stretch.

Bodywear in the lingerie conversation

Kamali has never been a lingerie house in the classic sense. There are no lace-cup bras in the range and no intimates category in the site's navigation. But the line between her swim and modern lingerie is thin by design. A Corset Mio with lightly lined cups and clear slip straps, a stud underwire bikini bra that the brand suggests wearing as a cropped top, a high-waist brief cut Bill Bottom: these share construction and fabric with the bodysuits and shapewear sold by intimates brands. That is why her designs appear beside lingerie in retail feeds and in this encyclopedia's catalog, and it is a crossover she wrote into the product copy herself.

Early online, and the Walmart experiment

Kamali was early to e-commerce. Her company had a website by the mid-1990s, and Wikipedia credits her as the first designer to open an online store on eBay. She also let customers try pieces before buying, a service the brand says predates both e-commerce and cell phones.

In 2008 she produced a collection for Walmart, every item priced under $20, and demand was strong enough that it crashed the retailer's website. For a designer whose work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was a bold move into mass retail.

The Kamali business now

In 2016 the Council of Fashion Designers of America gave Kamali its Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2021 she published a book, "I Am Invincible," on fitness, health, beauty, style and aging, and she now runs a podcast and daily livestreamed workouts alongside the clothing, a skincare and scent line called NORMALIFE, and a home collection.

She has also built a program around her archive and artificial intelligence, started after she enrolled in an MIT course on AI in June 2023. More than half a century after the basement shop, the woman who put Farrah Fawcett in a red one-piece is training software on her own back catalog.

Last updated October 7, 2026