Farrah Fawcett wore a Norma Kamali swimsuit for THAT famous 1970s poster

Farrah Fawcett is the star of the best-selling pinup poster of all time where she throws back her head while wearing a plunging red swimsuit.

The iconic image was taken in 1976 when the Texas native was on her TV series Charlie’s Angels. It has gone on to sell over 12million copies worldwide. 

But the designer of that swimsuit, Norma Kamali, shared on Wednesday when on Behind The Velvet Rope With David Yontef that she was not a fan of the suit. ‘I was horrified when I saw she wore it!’ said the New York native. 

Bruce McBroom, a freelance photographer who had worked previously with Farrah, took the now-famous picture and was paid $1,000 for his work.

The poster is still available for sale and is believed to have been copied more than a billion times for use on T-shirts or other posters. It is rated as one of the iconic images of the 1970s and a copy was put inside the Oblio Satellite Probe that was shot into space by NASA in 1977.

Fawcett died in June 2009 after a long battle with cancer. 

Now Kamali, 75, has admitted she was not a fan of the infamous red swimsuit.

‘Well, you know, at the time a lot of designers work very closely with celebrities and I did, I worked with so many people and Farrah was a really good customer,’ began the fashion icon.

‘She lived in LA, but she shopped a lot in New York and she was in New York a lot.’

Kamali also shed light on Farrah’s true nature: ‘She was as beautiful inside as out, truly, truly, truly, truly a lovely person.’

Farrah had visited Kamali’s shop and snapped up several pieces from her, as was usual.  ‘She bought a lot of nice swimwear – she just would come in and shop and buy things,’ noted the designer during the podcast.

And when Farrah purchased that low-cut red swimsuit, the fashion guru was unaware: ‘I had no idea that she bought that swimsuit,’ said Kamali.

Norman was also not informed that the suit would be worn in the 1976 photo shoot for the poster.

So when Norma got a look at the poster for the first time she was stunned. 

‘When I saw the poster, I was horrified!’ she said because she did not like the suit.

‘I did a lot of testing and I tested that style. I did six swimsuits and I put it in the store and I thought, “I’m not going to make that one again. It’s just not a good, it’s not good,”‘ she said. ‘I don’t like what I did.’

And then the suit was suddenly everywhere. ‘Then I see it on the poster and I thought, “What, who, Oh my God!”

She asked Farrah why she choose that red suit.

‘I said, why did you wear that? Like why that suit all the suits? And she said –  you know it’s so different from today, she didn’t have a whole squad putting her together. – she said she was with the photographer and it was a very low key, low maintenance kind of thing and she had the suit in her bag.’

Fawcett just happened to have that red Kamali suit with her and without much thought put it on for the shoot.

Turns out Farrah and the photographer ‘really loved’ the shot and decided to make a poster of it, said Norma.

She further explained that Farrah and the photographer had long wanted to make a poster together and when they saw that image in the red suit, they went with it.

‘So I literally went along for the ride with that one,’ added Kamali.

But she does not want to take credit for the poster becoming a blockbuster.

‘That swimsuit had nothing to do with the success of that poster. I’ll tell you that,’ she noted.

She went on to ‘fix’ the design of the suit making it ‘better, different.’

When the Smithsonian asked if they could use the swimsuit in an exhibit Norma told them she could give them a ‘new version’ of the suit. The museum said no.

‘We want the one she wore, they told me. So there it is, memorialized in the Smithsonian. So there you go,’ said Norma.