After a quiet spring 2026 show Daniella Kallmeyer was newly drawn to lively textures and novel carefree silhouettes. “I love to start with a place or a feeling for pre-fall, which is a high summer collection,” the designer said in her sunny SoHo loft. “Imagining this ‘city girl on her European vacation,’ felt a little trite and overdone, so I thought, if she’s not going to France or Italy, and she’s not on a rugged American vacation in Montana, where is she going?” She settled on Morocco or India, but was quick to add that her girl “is not in costume.” The result was a distinctively Kallmeyer collection with an unexpected newness courtesy of earthy vibes and shapes that looked like they had just been thrown on the body, effortlessly gathered here and there as if by magic.
Those earthy vibes could be found in tailored shift dresses with exposed raw-edged hems along the princess seams, in semi-sheer cotton tunics, and even in tech-y windbreakers woven with metallic nylon for a crinkly futuristic effect—“I’m pretty sure this can go through a metal detector,” she joked. For pre-fall, Kallmeyer’s classic tailoring came with an added bit of ease both in the suits themselves, and in the styling alternatives: a wide scarf tied around the waist of a cotton poplin shirt “trapped in silk” and cut like a jacket, or a bustle skirt wrapped around the hips. Very ’90s-inspired draped jersey pieces in shades of caramel and toffee brown, or tempest blue rounded out the offering.
Oftentimes a designer’s vision can only be achieved through faithful recreations of the full looks they set forth in their lookbooks, but hanging on the racks in her showroom, each shirt, dress, and skirt, seemed to offer a universe of possibilities on its own. At the end of our appointment, Kallmeyer described how she “grew the shapes”; it was an apt description for a collection rooted in the sense of the human-made.