Longtime Wellness Guru Norma Kamali Is Finally Getting Into the Beauty Game
Norma Kamali looks fantastic. The 74-year-old designer has taut, glowing skin; so hydrated, it is the embodiment of a giant vitamin E capsule. And when Kamali talks, she has more energy than a toddler who has just inhaled a bag of candy. It’s like she sleeps 12 hours a night, and her morning green juice is laced with every kind of adaptogen. In other words, Kamali is healthy. She has, after all, long been ahead of her time in the world of nutrition and self-care. In the 1970s, she was the first to purvey the art of athleisure, creating all things après gym, like her signature sweatshirt dresses and transitional maillots. She opened a wellness cafe in 2001, long before the name Juice Press was on the lips of influencers. Now, Kamali is bottling her healthy lifestyle for skin with NormaLife: The Skinline. It’s not just for women; it’s for everyone. “Men take our things anyway and borrow them,” says Kamali. (She refers to the line as “democratic.”) The collection’s four highlighter-hued tubes are dubbed “Clean,” a soap-free cleanser, “Smooth,” an exfoliant, “Glow,” a color enhancer, and “Soft,” an everyday moisturizer that Kamali tells me is approved for “3-year-olds and up.”
Kamali was committed to creating products with understandable, natural ingredients. During development, she became accustomed to questioning everything. “‘Why is this ingredient in my product,’ I would ask,” she says. “And they would tell me, ‘Don’t worry; it’s okay.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no, you don’t understand. I don’t trust anybody.’”
Kamali’s recipes hark back to her individual approach to wellness. A longtime fan of olive oil and its benefits, she would bring olive pits to a German jeweler who would finely grind them so she could add them to her exfoliant. (An environmentally friendly answer to plastic, pollution-ready microbeads.) As I sit with Kamali, she puts a quarter-size dollop of “Clean”—key ingredients, charcoal and aloe—on my hands and has me rub them together until the charcoal lightens; then she instructs me to wash it off. When I return to the table, the tops of my formerly dehydrated, rough hands have been transformed into smoother, younger-looking versions of themselves. “But now imagine [this for] your face, body, and feet,” says Kamali.
Longtime Wellness Guru Norma Kamali Is Finally Getting Into the Beauty Game
The line’s color enhancer, “Glow,” is also part of Kamali’s effort to enhance skin without makeup. Using fermented sugar beets to perk skin up, the product is made for all skin tones. It disappears into the skin and starts activating within 15 minutes. After about three hours, it has developed completely, leaving the user with, well, a glow. “You can sweat, you can make love, and you can get caught in the rain,” Kamali says.
Ultimately, Kamali hopes her line will reinvigorate the power of human touch. Kamali takes my hand and holds it. “When was the last time someone held your hand like this?” she asks. I shrug. “The point is, we need to be kind to one another.” With a feel-good philosophy, simple ingredients, and an inclusive approach, Kamali is channeling her wellness experience into a line that feels thoroughly modern. “Timeless style, as we know, is never going to let you down,” she says. “And ingredients that are timeless don’t let you down either.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
