KALLMEYER SUITS YOU

Over a decade after launching her label, Daniella Kallmeyer is still just a cool girl creating the wardrobe we all want.

- MATTIE KAHN

On a drizzly morning in September, the sunshine turned out to be hiding in the Corner Bar Dining Room at the Nine Orchard hotel in downtown New York. It was there that the designer Daniella Kallmeyer had-after over a decade in business-set up the first formal New York Fashion Week presentation for her namesake label, featuring a dozen or so models dressed in her spring 2024 collection.

The mood was all cheer and scarves tied just so. The models wearing dark sunglasses and almond-toed sandals that I later learned retailed for $4.99, but which had a striking resemblance to an $890 version from The Row-chatted and smiled. The people who had been invited to watch the models swish around in tomato-red cardigans and mesh pants did, too.

The room was awash in the suiting staples for which Kallmeyer has become known-no Succession memes required. The clothes have never been quiet, per se, but more discreet. And most of the women who wear them still hear about the brand from the ultimate influencer: a well-dressed friend.

You have perhaps started to glimpse Kallmeyer's designs on late-night shows and red carpets. Katie Holmes is a fan. So is SNL fixture Chloe Fineman. Kate McKinnon wore a hot-pink Kallmeyer suit to the Barbie premiere and Sarita Choudhury-an actress whose latest scene-stealing role the current SAG-AFTRA strike bars me from mentioning-wore the brand's shawl-collar tuxedo jacket and Tár-ish white shirt to the presentation itself. She later went semi-viral for photos that showed her with a Dalmatian outside the hotel. (Google it.) The look made such an impression on writer Emilia Petrarca that she devoted an entire installment of her newsletter, Shop Rat, to helping The New York Times writer Jazmine Hughes approximate it.