Inside Bortolami Gallery, where Daniella Kallmeyer staged the fall 2025 show for her namesake label, sat a shiny black piano flanked by black gauzy rectangles hanging from the ceiling. The first exit was the Spanish pianist and composer Marta Sánchez, who sat at the piano and played for the duration of the show. “The collection began with a lot of poetic, romantic, and cinematic references, but in the current climate, it really became more of a march and an anthem and there was a seriousness to it,” said Kallmeyer backstage before the show. “I wanted things to be beautiful, to feel sublime and serene, even if it’s just for this moment of intimacy we’re creating in this space. So we can pause and breathe and remember craft and artistry.”
Suiting is what Kallmeyer does best, and after a few seasons of expanding her range into denim and evening, she returned to her core DNA. Highlights included a black double-breasted suit cut close to the body yet sort of square, a shrunken gray blazer with hidden lapels (paired with baggy light-blue-wash jeans), and a very hot kind of ’80s full-on businesswoman ensemble of a softened black suit worn over a nubby crewneck sweater and shirt and tie and topped off with a lightweight mac-style coat.
While all these obviously beautiful, interesting, and diverse women walked through the space, a realization: Oh, these are just clothes, but…. A model walks by wearing a button-down shirt (unbuttoned to there) tucked into trousers tied with a sash around the hips, but as she walks away, it turns out the sash is neatly constructed into the trouser waistband, perfectly following the line of the back pockets. Are these just clothes? Then another model in a delicately draped butter yellow jacket with five buttons and matching trousers (again with the sash waistband). The word shacket is a scourge, but no, that’s not what that is anyway; it’s more of a jacket-blouse, but jlouse is too complicated a word. By the time a model passes in a yellow-and-brown houndstooth jacket, a matching stole casually draped over her shoulder and held by a gloved hand, something has changed. These are just clothes, but…such clothes!
Back to Kallmeyer and her cinematic references. I imagine what it would be like if the models had subtitles that showed their thoughts like in that R.E.M. video; they would probably mundane things that still somehow manage to reveal something. Backstage, right before the show started, a woman walked by wearing a leather jacket, velvet straight-leg trousers, and a greenish collared shirt. I couldn’t tell if she was a model or not. She walked the runway. (Would it have made a difference if she hadn’t?) These were all just women. These were all just clothes. But on this Tuesday afternoon, with this piano music and their swirling paths through the space, it was a great sight to behold.
