IndiaAIFounders — As Kallmeyer Grows, Its Commitment to the (Very Chic) Customer Never Wavers

Kallmeyer is coming into its own. It’s been two years since the New York label, helmed by the inimitably cool Daniella Kallmeyer, began showing consistently on the New York Fashion Week schedule, and it was hard not to compare Thursday’s Spring 2027 outing to that first Spring 2025 runway. What’s interesting is that very little has changed about the brand; rather, it’s only grown — beyond its local “IYKYK” status and its tailoring niche.

The new collection had a fresh focus on woven materials and the act of wrapping, and marked the launch of the brand’s instantly covetable first handbag, the Magazine Bag. Shoes are next — following a recent Nike sneaker collaboration. Kallmeyer also now has two flagship stores — one downtown, one uptown — and is looking to expand further. Last year, Kallmeyer was nominated for CFDA American Womenswear Designer of the Year.

The show itself has grown as well: from 2024’s super-intimate runway inside a (albeit stunning) midtown lighting studio, where I felt like I’d somehow infiltrated the most innately stylish female friend group in New York (the sort who turn out to be surprisingly friendly), to 2026’s comparatively sprawling floor of the Ukrainian Institute, where that friend group was a lot bigger, but equally smart and chic.

Jane Krakowski, Molly Ringwald, Jodi Balfour, Abbi Jacobson

Photo: Denoté Lee and Peter Zwolinski/BFA

Nothing inspires Kallmeyer, who started her brand in 2012, more than her clientele — and instead of paid VIPs, that’s who sits in the proverbial front row. It just so happens that Jenna Lyons, Cass Bird, Julianna Marguiles, Celine Song, Janicza Bravo, Abbi Jacobson and Justine Lupe are among them.

“The women who come into my store — that is front row in my mind. And I think what makes Kallmeyer so Kallmeyer is that the front row is not women who we coerced into coming to a fashion show,” she said backstage after the show. “Yes, they’re here to celebrate the big moments, but they are very much here because they are part of the everyday moments.”

Nicole Brydon Bloom, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Daniella Kallmeyer, Celine Song, Justine Lupe

Photo: Denoté Lee and Peter Zwolinski/BFA

But back to the clothes: Kallmeyer was thinking about Hideyuki Oka’s manual “How to Wrap Five Eggs” as well as the work of Columbian textile artist Olga de Amaral, who “manipulates regular materials into these luminescent, beautiful, swirly, glamorous pieces with really rich colors and multiple layers of textures and materials that change directions,” Kallmeyer said. “It was something that I really wanted to try to challenge myself to emulate.” The result is beautifully layered, airy knits that fit in just right with the brand’s signature tailoring.

“We ended up with all of these amazing textiles and techniques and surfaces and materials. “Our challenge was to bring ourselves back to this sense of severity and discipline,” she continued. “That’s where you see the juxtaposition of all these materials and then these very sharp lines.”

But ultimately, it all comes back to the Kallmeyer community. The designer got married three weeks before the show. (“They say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person,” she joked.) “It goes back to this idea that the clothes are only as good as the situations we put them in,” she explained. “So imagining my friends at events and my own wedding and the places that we want to feel our most sexy or our most elevated or our most casual or our most powerful, that’s the answer I need to find.”

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See every look from Kallmeyer Spring 2027 below.

Kallmeyer Spring 2027

Kallmeyer Spring 2027. Photo: Courtesy of Kallmeyer

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