Last week, Daniella Kallmeyer was named one of the American Womenswear Designer of the Year nominees for the upcoming 2025 CFDA Fashion Awards.
“I honestly did not see it coming,” Kallmeyer said ahead of her spring runway show at the downtown Crane Club. ”It feels like it’s been our year, but we’re not doing this for awards. It feels like we’ve been so rooted and grounded, and it feels really big. What I love about it is, it’s nominated by the people and that feels so Kallmeyer. It feels especially amazing because it feels like the clothes did it and the community did it.”
Kallmeyer founded her business in 2012 and since then has been steadily growing, refining her strong aesthetic, and has become a go-to brand that women truly love to wear. It’s because her clothes, spanning from precise tailoring to spring’s show-closing sensually elegant dresses, have a captivating quality and thoughtful details imbued within.
Backstage, Kallmeyer spoke about how spring expresses “the beauty and heartache of being alive right now.” Her moodily lit show, set to an original score by Richard Sears featuring Dinah Washington’s poetic “This Bitter Earth” over a Max Richter’s melody brought the sentiment to the next level.
Kallmeyer referred to her collection in three acts, starting light, airy and natural with a tonal white suit that emphasized leisure through chic drawstring trousers, a beautiful drop-waist, crinkled rosette gown and easy pinstripe linen layers, to name a few. A palette cleanser, “to calm your nervous system,” she said of the mood she and her peers have coincidentally been messaging this week.
“Somebody asked me, ‘If this collection was on a dating app, what would she say?’” Kallmeyer said. “It’s, ‘Get you a girl who can do both.’ She’s so elegant, but she also can pitch her own tent.”
She might be wearing a butter yellow caped and draped blouse, but pair it with a textural crochet column skirt, or pair her go-to minimalist work suiting with colorful scarf dressing, sexy patent heeled thong sandals and little athletic shorts. “It’s kind of like Euro Americana,” Kallmeyer said of act two’s subtle additions, before closing the show with lengthy slim toppers softened with sweeping skirts — translating the collection’s elegantly elevated élan into the night.