‘Shoes remind me of how far I’ve come.’
Pitsami Norm was only 5 when she saw how cruel the world could be.
She was held in a concentration camp, along with her nine siblings and parents, during the Cambodian Civil War. The children were taught how to hold rifles. There was little food, and she watched her two sisters die of starvation.
Her parents gathered up the remaining family and escaped the camp one night wearing no shoes, so their footsteps wouldn’t be heard in the woods. They made it to Thailand and later settled in Boston in 1982 with the help of a church. Norm was 6.
But shoes would become a symbol of survival.
“When we escaped the Khmer Rouge regime, my father gathered the family in the middle of the night and told us to walk barefoot to avoid the guards,” said Norm, who lives in Cypress with her four children. “Moonlight was the only source of light that guided us, and I remembered the pain and the blood that was shed during each step of our journey. I appreciated and fell in love with shoes immediately when we first arrived in the U.S. I believe the right pair of shoes can change your life.”
She learned English with the help of church parishioners but said fitting into a new, mostly white, culture was hard.
“I was one of the few Asians in my school. I felt afraid, and I constantly had to prove myself. I also didn’t have nice clothes or shoes. We didn’t have the means,” Norm said.
While her parents worked manufacturing jobs, Norm and her sister were the first in her family to attend college. Norm graduated with a degree in finance from Northeastern University in Boston and a dream of starting her own business. (Her mother died of cancer in 2009; her father died in 2013.)
After Norm married, she and her then husband moved to Houston. She had a successful career as a portfolio manager for a major bank. In 2008, she started P.S. Affairs, an event-planning company, after helping a friend with a wedding. Then in 2018, she started Houston Pallets and Crates, a manufacturing company that ships internationally.
That same year, she channeled her passion for fashion, décor and charity into hosting the inaugural L’affaire Du Monde Couture for a Cause fashion show at the Ballroom at Bayou Place. It featured designers from Uzbekistan and Cambodia and Houston designers Chloe Dao, Sameera Faridi, Danny Nguyen and
Umair Khan with MeruMeru. It also benefited The Rose, which provides mammograms and other breast health services, and the Alliance for Multicultural Community Services.
By 2020, Norm left her corporate job to focus full time on her companies.
Shoes, mostly stilettos, have been part of her wardrobe at every step for Norm, whose colleagues called her the Stilettos Lady.
“I would have between five to 10 pairs of shoes in my office. I randomly change heels throughout the day, depending on my mood and meetings. Shoes remind me of how far I’ve come,” said Norm, who will celebrate Cambodian New Year on April 14.
On that day, she plans to honor her ancestors and express gratitude for her life’s blessings.
And she’ll be wearing stilettos.