LABOR: Taking Sweat Out of Style

Her sportswear is renowned for its sexy variations on the sweatshirt, but lately Designer Norma Kamali has been perspiring about her unwanted association with a different fashion tradition: the sweatshop. Last week the New York State department of labor said it had slapped Kamali with a record $10,000 fine for illegally employing workers to cut and sew garments for her at home. It was the first time a big-name designer had been singled out for breaking the state's 1935 sweatshop law. Kamali stopped using the homeworkers, mostly Hispanic and Asian, when state labor officials began in December to look into complaints from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Partly because of the lost production, the designer decided to stop supplying clothes to any stores other than her two Manhattan shops.