The first days of summer in New York City have an indescribable energy. Yes, they are hot, and sticky, and humid; but the air is buzzing with an electricity that mixes freedom and possibility. Walking into the Kallmeyer store on a recent muggy afternoon, where the designer was showing her resort collection and celebrating the store’s five year anniversary, that feeling was magnified tenfold; and not just because Megan Rapinoe was sitting at one of the tables that had been set up in front of the store, casually people-watching in her Kallmeyer outfit, while music boomed from a nearby speaker. “We opened the store five years ago to the day,” Daniella Kallmeyer explained. “I opened this store as a pop-up with pennies I had scraped up, and two weeks later we were certain that this was our destiny.”
Amid the music, the celebration, the drinks, and the “adult Lunchables” of potato chips and caviar from Raf’s that were being passed around, Kallmeyer’s collection remained the center of attention. See the waxed cotton field jacket in a deep shade of olive green with contrasting corduroy details, or the tuxedo shirt with an undone bow-tie resting across its shoulders. A black silk jacket with a slightly cropped silhouette had a shirt-like collar and four buttons on its lapel, and was so severe in its silhouette that it became almost a seduction. I noticed it on the rack as Kallmeyer talked about a character from the 1999 film Never Been Kissed that she’d been thinking about. “He wears a tuxedo shirt to school, but it’s unbuttoned and there’s something so feminine about him that you’re like, I don’t know why I’m attracted to you. And so much of the collection is like that, it’s a sexual attraction that you have to boys, girls, whatever, and it’s not because of their gender identity; it’s the way they carry themselves, their vibe.” Looking back at the jacket, I understand what she meant completely. In the lookbook she left the last button undone, and paired with a white knit skirt with a slit up to there.
“Kallmeyer historically has been quite buttoned-up, and very much about being perceived as serious and strong; but our client has really given us the permission to wardrobe her through all aspects of her life,” the designer said. To that end, the collection also included hand-drawn striped cotton t-shirts (layer a short-sleeve tee over a long-sleeve tee for maximum cool); delicate pointelle camisoles and leggings; sherbert shades like petal pink and butter yellow; biker shorts; and even Kallmeyer boxer briefs that can playfully peek out of your low-slung Kallmeyer jeans. “There is something about this collection that is undoing some of this seriousness that we’ve claimed for our customer in order [for her] to be seen as powerful, where this collection says that she’s just as powerful in her t-shirt as she is in her tuxedo.”