Services were held Tuesday for Jamileh Kamran, the founder of Arkansas’ first fashion school and a designer for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Kamran, 72, died of cancer on July 17 at her home in Little Rock, Ark., according to her daughter, Nirvana Manning. Prior to her passing she was still leading the Jamileh Kamran School of Fashion, which she started in 1997. It is now known as the Jamileh Kamran Arkansas Fashion School and has received national accreditation.

In addition, Kamran owned and operated Jamileh Kamran Designs, and penned two books, “The Art of Couture” and “The Art of Decoration.”

Born in northern Iran, near the Caspian Sea, Kamran’s childhood was somewhat transient due to her father’s work for the department of educations, which kept the family moving every four or five years. They lived In Tehran for a period of time, and also in southern Iran near the Persian Gulf. Following the death of her mother, Kamran’s father enrolled her in a sewing class at the age of 11 and she immediately took to it, her daughter said.

At 18, she met her future husband, Mohammad “Allen” Afsordeh, while taking college prep course. Following his enlistment and service in the army, the couple wed in 1975. Kamran’s work life started at Iran Electronics Industries, where in 1978 her boss advised her to leave the country. She headed for the U.S. with her toddler daughter months before the onset of the Iranian Revolution. Joining her brother Jalil, who is known as “Jim,” in Arkansas, Kamran used a school visa to study business administration at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, before switching tracks to focus on design and dropped out of college.  

While working as a secretary for Dr. Emile Eckart at the Arkansas State Hospital, she designed custom clothes in her off-hours. Manning said, “When she moved to this country, she couldn’t read a word or write a word of English, but she could speak a little bit [of English] and understand a little bit of it. And she could type a million words a minute, so she got a job at the hospital.”

After a stretch in that role, Eckart, who had given Kamran the support to learn English, gave her the confidence to start her own couture house, her daughter said. The self-taught designer started out by having private showings at the Little Rock Club, and later teamed with the philanthropist Willie Oates for charity fashion shows. She unveiled her first store in Little Rock in 1983.

In the early 1980s, a chance introduction at a function to Clinton, whose husband Bill was Arkansas’ governor at that time, later led to Kamran being invited to the state first lady’s office to show her sketches. Sometimes Hillary Clinton would bring her daughter Chelsea to the store too, Manning recalled. From Clinton’s tenure as first lady of the state of Arkansas through her White House years, Kamran periodically dressed her for key events, including for Bill Clinton’s second gubernatorial inaugural. For that occasion, she created a green lamé gown with a printed gold-colored chiffon overlay during Bill Clinton’s first term as president, the designer made a couple of trips to the White House for design consultations.

“Hillary was very salt of the earth and down-to-earth. They got along very well,” Manning said. “Hillary was always very [interested in] business casual. She always liked to look professional. She didn’t love a lot of lace, or accessorizing. My mother helped Hillary with more sophisticated, casual looks.”

Kamran’s personal style was more rooted in an abundance of colors, jackets and, most importantly, giant swing ones. Her namesake school was her greatest interest, though, having created its curriculum from draping classes to costume design and more, welcomed generations of students, taking them to fashion weeks and seeing them thrive in their careers. Many former students, who were taught in classes of 10 to 15 people to ensure hands-on training, became friends, her daughter said.

As Kamran’s namesake school took up more of her time, the couture part of her life was scaled back but her store remained open and will continue to operate. In lieu of flowers, Kamran’s family has started a memorial scholarship fund for emerging designers. Partial to a Persian word for endearment, “moosh-ie,” Kamran was “very much a mixture of Persian American culture. When she was here, she really tried to keep her roots in a lot of the things that she did,” Manning said.

In addition to Kamran’s husband, brother, and daughter, the designer is survived by her son Nader.