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1:04Daniella Kallmeyer:Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Cuck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is Daniela Kalmeier, founder and designer of Kalmeier. We're talking starting a brand from scratch, the European system versus the American system, lesbian chic for all, and so much more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries.

1:41Daniella Kallmeyer:Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics finance the art world and much more if you're interested listeners of fashion people get a discount just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join puck or start a free trial happy friday everyone hope you are having a great week it's been a pretty nice one in paris the weather is truly amazing the shows have been good and also bad but i will say that i feel less dire than I typically do at this moment in the fashion week cycle.

2:23Daniella Kallmeyer:There haven't been as many ups and downs. I felt like physically not well in Milan, and then here I felt pretty good. I don't know. Maybe I'm at a different moment in my life where I don't get as upset about this stuff, but it's been fun. Anyway, I have two very special guests on Monday's episode to discuss Paris, but let's just say that Tom Ford was a fabulous show. To me, the best of the season. But Dior and Alaya were also very good, especially Dior. I also love Dries Van Noten and Marie Adam Lennart. And I had a really great time at Isabel Marant on Thursday night. So more to come on all that stuff.

3:02Daniella Kallmeyer:This week in line sheet, I look at product plan for Versace. And Malik Morris, our line sheet correspondent, is back with a scoop on Net-a-Porter layoffs. Net-a-Porter, you decide. Today is Loewe and Sunday is Celine Hermes and much more. I'm excited to meet Plum Sykes in real life on Sunday. More to come and have a great weekend. Let's get going with Daniela. And big thanks again to Starbucks for not only sponsoring Daniela's show, but sponsoring this podcast that we did. It was super fun. I look forward to working with them more. And I think you'll enjoy this conversation. Daniela Kallmeyer, welcome to Fashion People.

3:46Thank you for having me. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Oh, actually, I had a Starbucks egg and spinach wrap. That is the best wrap. It's the best wrap. I've been eating it for, I think, 15 years. I hope they never take it off the menu. The tortilla is so good. So good. So healthy. Perfect amount of protein. It's really, really good. That wasn't even a plug. That's genuinely what I had this morning. It's so good. I also like the egg bites. But the feta wrap, I've honestly 20 years. I've been eating it since I used to go to the 14th Street when I would come down from Washington Heights on the A and go to the 14th Street Starbucks on the way to Forbes on Fifth Avenue.

4:34That's like when you're looking into the case at Starbucks and you're like, there's a cake bite and there's an egg wrap and the egg wrap is going to satisfy me. It's true. I mean, eggs are the perfect protein, as we've said on Fashion People many times. Go eggs. So where did you, you didn't grow up in New York, did you? No, I grew up, my family's from South Africa, and we immigrated here when I was a baby. And I grew up in the D.C. area, in the suburbs. But my grandparents, when they immigrated to America, moved to Riverdale in the Bronx. Oh, cool. So I really felt connected to New York for a very long time.

5:15I used to spend my summers here since I was 10, 12 years old. My grandmother would teach me how to sew in the summers. I would take dance intensive courses in the city. So when I went away to school in London, I used to say I'm going home to New York. That's funny. What was it like growing up in the D.C. metro and being interested in fashion? Because you went to Central St. Martin's, right? I went to the London College of Fashion. Okay. You went to the London College of Fashion, right? That's like the business sister. So, but you were interested in fashion growing up. From the youngest possible age.

5:56I think I have sketchbooks from like six years old where I drew like a boot, but there were legs coming out of it and like that was the dress and then like a dog and the tongue was a was like a skirt was it something i think about dc a lot in terms of the context of people have to really dress up there but it doesn't feel like and robin gavon the great fashion critic was based there for many years and is still there she worked at the washington post and all that stuff but it's a very interesting city for fashion like it was the top market for rent the runway for a long time but it's not like fashion fashion did you feel like your interest in it was unique or were there did you share that with your friends well first of all it's funny that you say that because i was recently looking at like our shipping geography and after like new york and la dc is next so that's interesting thanks to my homies um but no i don't i didn't feel like well so first of all i grew up going to the high school that the book that mean girls was written about was about um so you can imagine what like some of my classmates dressed like but i would not say they were my muses necessarily.

7:19Was it like Abercrombie era? Totally. Abercrombie, Juicy Couture, guest jeans, limited to. Wow. But I grew up as a theater girly. I was a thespian. Famously. We're going to talk about that later. So I think more than like, oh, DC as a fashion place it was like dc as like an arts and culture community i went i did like community theater growing up so there were like adult performers in my life and cost like professional costume was part of my life i was a competitive figure skater so costume was part of my life so i think for a long time probably until i graduated high school and um had my first internship in the city and realized that fashion and costume are different.

8:16I sort of blended them together and learned to sew for all the same reasons. I wonder if you competed against my friend Hannah Fidel in professional figure skating. That name doesn't ring a bell, does it? I competed with myself. She sent me, she's from Maryland, and she sent me the Vera Wang, I mean, not Vera Wang, the Oscar De Laurentiis, sorry, Alex Bolin, the Oscar de la Renta the Canadian skate figure skater has been wearing them and she was like I can't believe it but I wonder if you two competed so what was your first internship so when I was like 16 or 17 I was staying with my grandmother and she had a very glamorous friend who was a shopaholic and she had a daughter my age who was into sports so she used to take me shopping with her and we wandered into Luca Luca which was an Upper East Side staple I think there were like somewhere between three and six boutiques like just in Manhattan and Luca came down from the atelier to greet her and thank her for shopping and I like an arrogant teenager that I was pulled out my sketchbook and handed it to him and said I want to work for you and he said we don't have job openings and I said no I'll work for free I'll be your intern and he said we don't have interns and I said well great then it sounds like you need one um and he gave me the the job and I worked for him for like two or three summers and I think that was like really where I fell in love with making clothes and like I specifically remember spending one whole summer just like perfecting cashmere cardigans and like the exact placement of embroidery on dresses and Adriana Lima was one of his muses and I remember fitting with her but really his focus was like dressing the women of the Upper East Side and while he had these beautiful exquisite runway moments it was also about like a perfect trouser a beautiful suit a gorgeous dress and it was like my aha moments that like fashion and costume are not always the same thing.

10:29What did you learn at London College of Fashion? I really learned how to like cut good clothes, fit good clothes, learn about good fabric. I learned how to research. Was the culture there because especially from the Juicy Couture reference, I think I know how old you are. I'm not going to ask because I don't know. I don't really care the exact age, but it was a time when those schools in London in particular were hyper-competitive. Did you feel that being there? And was there, because it was like post-Christopher Kane and all those, and obviously, yeah. So did you feel that when you were at LCF?

11:14or was it a little separate because it wasn't St. Martin's and there wasn't like the Louise Wilson lure and all that? No, no, it was definitely very competitive. There was like competition within competition within competition. So you were at LCF and then, you know, when we got to our graduate year, you were working on your graduate collection. Then within the class of however many students we were, only like 12 of us or 20 of us made it into the graduate show. And then from that, only five of us made it into the Royal Academy show. So you had like, our teachers were the judges and then also outside industry.

11:54So you were sort of like competing for their affection while you were learning from them. So there was, and they were working in the industry. So there was certainly a competitiveness in that. But I have to admit, my sights were set beyond just the show being like the end goal. It was like, what happens after the goal? What happens after the show? What happens after the Royal Academy show? What happens in my career? Did you know you wanted to do your own brand even back then? I want to say yes and no. I really wanted to work for, like, I really wanted to work. when I was in school I was I had gone to the London College of Fashion and I had American friends who were in you know their overseas year their year abroad and they traveled every weekend and it just didn't occur to me to treat being in London like that I like was in the studio every weekend I took it very very seriously and so I just wanted to work like as long as I was working I was happy.

12:58I did an apprenticeship for Alexander McQueen while I was there, and I was obsessive with it. And so I was part of the team from the atelier that got pulled into launching McHugh. That must have been, and that was Sarah Burton, was the? No, Lee was alive then. Okay, so now I really know how old you are. I use good face cream. Wow. That's amazing. What was that like? and being around all those people who are all so legendary now and so famous because they've been in all these books and they're going to be on there's like 15 tv shows being made about him all the time it was uh i guess the best word i could use is somber um it was you know there was a severity and and respect that happened during the creative process there was sort of like a silence that made space for him to think about what you were presenting.

13:55And I think that that was really valuable for me to observe, especially as such a young person who was in such a small team presenting concepts to him. What did you learn about tailoring there? Because obviously that was what everything came from with him. Was there something specific that you learned that you took that you're still carrying on today? Well, I learned a lot about tailoring from my professors at LCF. I had one particular professor who was like a tailoring master. I had these tailoring shears that actually I had kept from my grandmother. And they said England on them. And that's a whole other story.

14:38We think that maybe they were like my great-great-uncle might have owned a factory in England after he left Austria when the Nazis invaded. so these were like family heirloom scissors and they were you know no less than 12 inches long and they were heavy and they were really good tailoring shears and Peter Cox used to walk into the room and he'd pick up my shears and he'd wipe them on the back of his head to grease them and then he'd cut he'd cut into the fabric like freehand and I was obsessed with him like obsessed He'd walk into the room smelling of booze. It was like nine o 'clock in the morning.

15:21And he was just like a mad genius. And we probably shouldn't like celebrate that kind of behavior. But it was just brilliant. And like it was so meticulous and so intuitive. And I just, that's all I cared about was like impressing him and like cutting perfect suit. Why did you move back to the States? Why didn't you get into the Euro ecosystem? I did for a little bit, but my grandmother was like my world and she was my muse and my best friend and she I thought I'd be in London for longer and she got sick and passed very quickly I think I assumed that after I came back to be with her that I'd go back I like left half my things and in London, but then I got back and it was the market crash and And it was hard to find a job.

16:15And I wasn't sure if going back there was a better idea than staying here to find work. And then all of a sudden, I found myself in her apartment in Riverdale and just like being here and being in New York. And that felt right. And you, I feel an Andrew Rosen adjacency with you. You worked at Allison Olivia. Did you work at Theory also? No, I never worked at Theory. You worked at Allison Olivia? I worked briefly at Alice and Olivia. I just feel like he'd like your stuff. Andrew and I love each other. He's the best. So you worked at Alice and Olivia. He owes me a round of golf. You've gone golfing with Andrew?

16:56No, no. But I will. I would do that too. Andrew, I will golf with you. I'm going to, he won't listen to this, but I'll be like, we talked about you and we talked about the fact that we want to go golfing with you. I don't think I should, I've never been golfing. I think I should get into golf clothes. Like that's really - You 100 % should, which is we do not have time to go on all these tangents, but I go running around the Rose Bowl and I see these ladies. I really want to be one of them and I need clothes. I got you. You can do like custom stuff for the masters. We'll talk about it afterwards.

17:30But so what did you do when you got here and you launched your brand in 2012? So what leading up, what were you working on and what made you decide to do it? And in the way that you did it, which was very under the radar and very small to start, I think you launched with$7 ,000. You spent$7 ,000. I remember meeting you and my friend Emmy Parsons' trunk show, and she was renting a place across from your studio. That was probably like six or seven years ago. but talk about the lead up to 2012 and what made you want to do it and how you're actually able to do it because most people launch with they their parents take a second mortgage out and they spend at least 200 grand if not a million bucks or whatever yeah like I said I just I wanted to work so I got to New York it was hard to find a job so I I would work anywhere so I I worked for Alice and Olivia for a little bit.

18:29I designed for QVC, HSN. That sounds awesome and such a good learning experience. Awesome. You know, I remember Isaac Mizrahi talking about how valuable traveling the United States was when he was designing for Target and like meeting real people and real bodies and learning how to design for them. And I felt the same way. It's like that's how you learn to make like really really good clothes that fit is when they fit everybody and when they're made for everybody and when like you know they they don't return them right they order them online they order them from how it fits and how it's made and a description of the fabric and then they they buy it i did a a graphic like merch line for nat geo which i collected national Geographic since like we moved to America so I had like shelves and shelves that were yellow growing up.

19:26I worked for a brand that's no longer around a Korean designer named Jen Kao and we were making like$7 ,000 dresses like silk jersey with fox fur trim. I mean I just took any work that I could get and I worked as hard as I could and then I started winding that down and just freelancing and I was working at the Todd English Food Hall at the Plaza as a waitress. I know it. I lied that I had experience. I didn't know how to open a wine bottle and I just I loved working there. I loved meeting people. I loved talking to them and charming them and telling them about what the oysters of the day were, even though I don't eat shellfish.

20:15And I saved up my money. And one day, Emily Krippitz, who was my manager at the food hall as a waitress, said, you know, I had some press online from the Royal Academy and some work that I had done. And one day I came into work and she said, come into my office. And she said, I looked you up. I Googled you. You're on the internet. You're a really talented designer and I don't know why you're doing this. And so Todd English actually sponsored my first show at the empty space down in the food hall before they expanded. And fun fact, fast forward all of these years, Emily is no longer in hospitality.

20:54She now works as a real estate broker. And she found me my Madison Avenue store. Wow. Full circle. Full circle. That deserves a round of applause.

21:10Daniella Kallmeyer:I don't smoke and I never have, but I feel like everyone else I know is suddenly smoking again. Of course, it's a free country. So if you like smoking, do what you will. But if your New Year's resolution is to quit or even to use nicotine in a healthier way, check out Quit With Jones. Visit quitwithjones.com slash fashion to take the free quiz and use code fashion to get 15 % off your personalized quitting journey. That's quitwithjones.com slash fashion. Taking back control starts now. Thanks to Quit With Jones for supporting this episode. And just a heads up, the mints contain nicotine, which is an addictive chemical.

21:55Daniella Kallmeyer:Jones is FDA approved and available for those that are 18 and older. For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But for our new season, we're widening the lens. Through deeply reported, narrative-driven stories, we're digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South, and in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to Gone South Season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows.

22:33so Todd throws you this fashion show what how did you even do the first collection with seven grand like can you walk us really quickly through how you were able to get samples together it's not dissimilar from how I did it for like the next several years which is I made the patterns myself. In many cases, I sewed the samples myself. You know, I was working in my Upper West Side apartment. I turned the living room into my studio until I could rent my first studio, which is a closet in another designer's showroom. I mean, I just, I think the gist of the whole story is that I really put my ego behind the vision for the brand.

23:21And I worked by myself for a really long time until I could hire someone freelance until I could find an intern. And, you know, I just kept doing it. I didn't let anybody tell me that it was like, not good enough that I wasn't in that many stores yet. I think my first season or maybe my second, I got into like three boutiques. I don't even think it paid for the samples. But just knowing that... How did you find them?

23:50I walked into stores in the city. I looked up stores that other brands sold to. I cold called people. And it was like one person wanting one skirt was enough for me. And if that skirt sold, I made two dresses. And if two dresses sold, I made three suits. And like, it really, it really was like that for many years. And until I, my bosses from Luka Luka, when they closed the business, started a trunk show business on the Upper East Side and called me up and said, we know you've been doing your own line. Do you want to participate in this like group trunk show? and I sold more in like a four or five day trunk show than I did in like three seasons of, you know, air quotes wholesaling.

24:44And these were customers who were shopping in the stores that were telling me no. They were shopping in like Saks and Barneys and Bergdorf's and they were coming in and saying, oh my God, this is exactly what I need in my wardrobe. Like this is like, where has this been all my life? And so it was like, that was enough encouragement for me to be like naive and cocky or whatever you want to call it to say, okay, I'm going to do one more collection or I'm going to make like five more shirts. So when you think about what the original vision for the brand, it feels like you were very clear because it's what it is today.

25:19What were you trying to accomplish? And then the second part of that question is on pricing. Your pricing is unique because it's not cheap and it's not contemporary, quote unquote. quote. It's like very specific. It feels like designer, but it's not crazy expensive stuff that you would typically get on the designer floor. A question is like, what was your big idea from the beginning? And then B, how did you figure out pricing to get it so specific? Well, first of all, exactly that. I appreciate the distinction because I think that that really is what makes the brand unique. I am a designer. I have luxury designer experience.

26:05I have a tailoring background. I approach the brand as a designer with a luxury mindset, but it's through clever sourcing, very strong relationships with my factories, like knowledge of how things get cut or how things get worn, that I'm able to make decisions about a target price point. And as I said, I moved to New York. I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't see myself in these stores. Like I personally, through my own personal journey of self-discovery and, you know, closeted queerness and, you know, a young designer who didn't grow up, you know, grew up around exquisite fashion, but couldn't afford it.

26:53All of these things, I think, were made up who I was when I walked into like Barney's co-op and said, these clothes are too contemporary for my taste. And then walked into Bergdorf's and said, well, I'm scared to even touch this because it's too expensive. And I knew that there were women out there who appreciated beautiful clothes that lasted a really long time. I mean, I looked at my own mother, my grandmother, who were incredibly elegant. They never wore designer clothes they were always like beautifully dressed or beautifully tailored there wasn't a designer brand in their closet and and so it didn't matter and I think that and I and I had to believe that there were people out there like that who could appreciate just like beautiful clothes rather than the brand name and so I really I went out and I launched this brand with that vision in mind like just make a beautiful designer brand that's not about trend.

27:49It's not about prints. I mean, this was like the era of fit and flare dresses and mismatching prints. And every trench coat had like a leather collar, you know, and every button down had like a diamante button. And I just wanted like a perfectly cut trouser and a beautiful shirt without feeling like you were going to work. Well, the interesting thing about your clothes, and I've looked, I've done, I used to do show reviews at style.com. Like I've looked at a lot of clothes. I still can't, I'm not like one of those writers that knows exactly why. I just know when I see something that it's good, like it's good, well done.

28:33And your stuff, it can be just a simple black blazer or a pair of pants, but you can just tell that it's good quality and that might be the stitching. And it's something that like some people could really can shoppers and whoever can really kind of pinpoint. But for me, it's just a visceral reaction of, oh, that thing is worth the money it is. And someone could make the exact same run of things that you make. And I would know that yours is better. And that is extremely hard to impart in the stuff that you do, which is very, I don't want to say simple, but clean. And so that's, that's a hard thing to impart that you're able to do.

29:15But when did you realize that, like, when was there the switch where you realized that everyone was catching on? Like, was there a season or was there a moment where, when you thought that your sales like quadrupled or something or well I think I attribute a lot of the recent sort of like aha growth that we've had where people are you know catching on to opening our first store and that came shortly after this sort of like run of trunk shows where I was like there are customers out there. I just have to find them. And so I put every last cent, penny, dollar, like whatever I found under the couch into opening that store on Orchard Street.

30:05I got the keys on like May 26th. And on June 4th, I opened this, the store with like furniture and fixtures that I made with a circular saw in the basement and like wood that I found on the street. And so, and then I like collected furniture. I, I emptied my apartment. I just wanted a space that felt like the home of my brand. And I do think that that made a really big difference. Like build, like world building allowed people to see what the clothes meant in situ and like how it felt like wardrobing, because I understand how, as a young designer, going into a department store saying, hey, this is the most perfect pair of black pants, they could say to me, well, we've got that covered.

30:55But when you put it in a wardrobe that really makes sense for women or for people who can identify with it, then you start putting the puzzle pieces together. And, you know, you mentioned like there's just like something different. I talk a lot about like the feeling of my clothes. And I know that that sounds like a little bit esoteric and maybe even like obnoxious. But that's fine. Not with this crew. But like I really do put so much into how do these clothes feel? How do they fall off of a real body? How do you stand differently or gesture differently or how deep are your pockets? And if they're deep, how do you position your body in them?