Norma's Model-Kins

Norma’s Model-Kins

by The Window Shopper

Norma Kamali is an industry veteran on the forefront of innovative technology when it comes to branding. Kamali has used bar code embedded mannequins that give window shoppers the opportunity to purchase from outside, composed an entirely 3-D runway presentation and launched a unique “try before you buy” program, giving clients a 48 hour window to try online purchases at home before buying. Kamali has a futuristic foresight that is beyond impressive for a designer of her tenure and even launched her e-commerce site in the early 90′s, lightyears away from the e-com boom of today and at a time when no one could predict the importance of an online presence.

Visually speaking, from her use of mannequins with computers as heads to a display of stacked tv’s, today Norma’s windows are no less on the cutting edge, featuring larger than life model-kins rather than traditional anonymous mannequins. On her photos turned sick window display, Norma said in a 2011 interview for Stylecaster, that the decision has not only “had a profound effect on the people coming into the store” but arose out of her desire for the “life-like quality of what a photograph can translate.“

And it is true, upon walking past the grandiose flagship where gold flags wave you haply forth like a child who just won the Golden Ticket, you do feel a real sense of profundity and realism; something that has been vacant from the face-less expanse of store fronts. Whereas most retailers rely on nondescript mannequins to give passerby’s the imaginative sense of being able to wear a certain look, Norma actually gives you real faces and forms and warm invitation inside!

Normally I match windows with their runway shows but Norma’s spring windows are in progress and I am not going back to winter, so here are my favorites for spring and hold tight for their sick upcoming display!