`For Fashion Designer Norma Kamali, Olive Oil Is 'at the Core of Who We Are' - Olive Oil Times
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For Fashion Designer Norma Kamali, Olive Oil Is 'at the Core of Who We Are'

By Hannah Howard
Mar. 16, 2015 08:22 UTC

Fashionistas know the name Norma Kamali, the star designer, as the cre­ative force behind Farrah Fawcett’s crim­son swim­suit in Charlie’s Angels, shoul­der pads, flowy silk para­chute dresses, and hot pants. We know her as a pas­sion­ate and devoted mis­sion­ary of olive oil. ​“The life of an olive tree is eter­nal,” Kamali says. ​“Olive oil is more impor­tant than fash­ion.“

With a Lebanese mother and a Basque father, Kamali’s child­hood home in New York was always stocked with the golden elixir. Her fam­ily used olive oil for ​“every rea­son — in the kitchen, of course, for my hair, to keep us reg­u­lar.” Kamali’s mom juiced decades before the activ­ity was a verb, She used olive oil for a num­ber of home reme­dies and passed on her pas­sion for vital­ity and health to her daugh­ter.

Kamali received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1964. A mere four years later, she opened her first bou­tique in New York. Since then, she’s been a cham­pion of exper­i­men­tal design and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion.

Ancient olive oil doesn’t seem to fit neatly into the con­stantly chang­ing, novel, trend obsessed world of fash­ion. Olive oil is ​“time­less,” Kamali says. ​“The olive tree has been a very impor­tant part of our his­tory, of the cul­ture of our planet. It’s at the core of who we are.”

For Kamali, fash­ion and olive oil are indeed inex­tri­ca­bly con­nected. ​“Olive oil is a method of pre­serv­ing fit­ness, health, and beauty…when your skin, your hair, your over­all well-being are in a really good place, it almost doesn’t mat­ter what you put on — you will look great.” Beauty starts from the inside and nur­tur­ing out bod­ies with antiox­i­dants and healthy fats found in olive oil is essen­tial. ​“With fash­ion peo­ple, I talk about how it makes them more beau­ti­ful. That gets their atten­tion.”

Photo: Contemporiste

Kamali’s ethos is embod­ied in her Wellness Café, a health and beauty shop meets café, tucked into the back of her flag­ship mid­town Manhattan shop. Customers can try out her dif­fer­ent olive oils driz­zled on air-popped pop­corn, a blank slate on which to expe­ri­ence the fla­vor of her oils. Everything in the shop is plant-based, cer­ti­fied organic, and care­fully cho­sen by Kamali her­self.

Shortly after September 11, inspired less by fads and more by what was impor­tant and eter­nal, Kamali began a quest to learn as much as she could about olive oil, to visit olive groves and take part in the har­vest. ​“We drank a lot of olive oil and became experts on the trees, their age, the effects of fin­ish­ing and pro­cess­ing, acid­ity, we became friends with the grow­ers.”

Kamali’s olive oils are ​“bot­tled and pack­aged as if they are a fine prod­uct like fra­grance or wine because they are.” She respects great extra vir­gin beau­ties from Italy, Spain, and beyond but fell in love hard­est for the oils of Provence. She cares deeply that her olive oil is the finest qual­ity and as fresh as pos­si­ble. That’s how peo­ple will fall head over heels, as she did.

She also has a line of stun­ning soaps, mas­sage oils, and lotions infused with olive oil. Her mom would be proud.

“Olive oil is where food began. We’re going back to square one,” Kamali says, ​“the wild, unprocessed side.” It also hap­pens to be mighty deli­cious.

Norma Kamali will be a speaker at the NYIOOC Conference on April 15.

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