Norma Kamali

For warmth and statement value, many owners say emphatically yes. The Sleeping Bag Coat is a classic icon Kamali first designed in 1973, and reviewers describe it as exceptionally cosy and compliment-magnet stylish despite its investment price. The main cautions shoppers raise are getting the length right for your height and the coat's packable bulk, so size carefully. As a long-haul winter piece it tends to earn its keep.

Norma Kamali designed the famous Sleeping Bag Coat in 1973 after a camping trip inspired her to create a wearable garment from a sleeping bag. That literal origin gives the coat its enveloping, quilted warmth and its enduring cult status. More than fifty years on, it remains the piece the brand is best known for.

Three things define her legacy: the Sleeping Bag Coat, sweats reimagined as everyday sportswear, and her swimwear. Her 1980 "Sweats" collection turned sweatshirt fabric into fashion and helped popularise athleisure, a trend still going strong today. Together these innovations make her one of American fashion's most influential designers.

From the early seventies Kamali made sleek, structure-free one-piece maillots and pushed very high leg cuts that set a trend lasting through the next decade. Most famously, she designed the red one-piece worn by Farrah Fawcett in the iconic 1976 poster, later considered the best-selling poster of all time, and that suit is now in the Smithsonian. She also made the bathing suit Whitney Houston wore on the back of her 1985 debut album. That cultural footprint is why her swim is legendary.

Norma Kamali, born Norma Arraez on June 27, 1945, is an American fashion designer and entrepreneur of Lebanese and Basque descent who lives in New York City. She studied illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology before opening her first boutique in 1967. Over five decades she has become known for the Sleeping Bag Coat, sweats as sportswear and her swimwear.

In 1967, aged 22, Kamali opened a tiny New York boutique in a 9-by-10-foot basement space with her then-husband Eddie Kamali. After their 1975 divorce she opened her own independent boutique, OMO Norma Kamali, with OMO standing for "on my own." In 1983 she bought and redesigned 11 West Fifty-Sixth Street as her headquarters, store, studio and showroom.

In 1974 Kamali began making her Parachute Collection from actual silk parachutes, complete with drawstrings that let pieces adjust in length and fit, a hallmark of the mid-seventies "Big Look" period. She still makes parachute clothing today, and the work was notable enough to feature in Diana Vreeland's Costume Institute curation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is one of her most inventive signatures.

Kamali's 1980 "Sweats" collection reimagined sweatshirt fabric as casual fashion, most famously as flounced, hip-yoked miniskirts known in the UK as rah-rah skirts. These were the first mini-length skirts in a decade to win wide acceptance, repopularising the miniskirt for the eighties, and the collection helped win the public over to large shoulder pads, which she made removable via velcro. It is widely credited with popularising athleisure.

Beyond her best-known pieces, Kamali designed and patented the High Heeled Sneaker in the 1980s and is one of several designers credited with popularising the shoulder pad in eighties womenswear. She was also among the designers chosen to create costumes for the 1978 film The Wiz. These touches show a designer constantly experimenting with how clothes function and look.

Fit is the thing to plan for, especially with the Sleeping Bag Coat, where shoppers note length can run long for shorter frames. Check the size guide against your height before buying, and remember many of her designs, like the parachute pieces with their drawstrings, are built to adjust. When the proportion is right, the pieces are both dramatic and comfortable to wear.