{"id":129998,"date":"2026-02-11T13:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T13:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/129998\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T13:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T13:17:13","slug":"why-real-women-want-to-wear-new-york-fashion-brands-ashlyn-kallmeyer-and-diotima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/129998\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Real Women Want to Wear New York Fashion Brands Ashlyn, Kallmeyer, and Diotima"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated6 min read<\/p>\n

To host an event at Design Miami last December, the gallerist Cristina Grajales selected a black wool jacket with a series of darts that subtly nipped the waist. The jacket was designed by Ashlynn Park, who founded her New York\u2013based label, Ashlyn<\/a>, in 2020. Grajales returns to Park\u2019s sculptural pieces often, particularly for events, because \u201cthey make me feel like myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"threeMaxime La<\/p>\n

From left: Ashlynn Park, Daniella Kallmeyer, and Rachel Scott<\/p>\n

Park, who has created a signature look of rounded shapes like soft peplums, ballooned pants, and curved outerwear, tasks herself with \u201cserving great women\u201d rather than anointing them with her vision. She worked under Yohji Yamamoto in Tokyo and later Raf Simons (at Calvin Klein) and Alexander Wang in New York and was inspired to launch her own brand to deliver the same level of craftsmanship, but with a more wearable approach\u2014clothes she could see herself in. But before setting out on her own, Park, who is a mother of two, says she needed to understand herself: \u201cI wanted to add my emotion, my filter as a human,\u201d she explains. In her younger years, she would wear heavy, oversize leather jackets weighed down with hardware, \u201cand then one day after 30, I couldn\u2019t wear them anymore,\u201d she says. Now, Park says, \u201cour collections are very light.\u201d Her designs are unique, conversation-starting, and, crucially, flattering on a range of bodies and easy to move in. This past November, Park won the American Emerging Designer of the Year award at the CFDA Fashion Awards; just days later, she was named the recipient of the CFDA\/VogueFashion Fund prize. <\/p>\n

Grajales has become not just an Ashlyn collector but a collaborator too; her namesake TriBeCa gallery hosted some of Park\u2019s first runway shows. \u201cI trust my instinct,\u201d Grajales says of her gravitation toward Park\u2019s pieces. \u201cIf a garment feels comfortable, aligned with how I move, and doesn\u2019t try to impose, then it\u2019s right.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"fashiongetty images\/\/LAUNCHMETRICS SPOTLIGHT<\/p>\n

From left: Zoe Salda\u00f1a in Ashlyn, Cristina Grajales in Ashlyn, four runway looks from Ashlyn Spring 2026.<\/p>\n

New York often gets left out of discussions about capital-F Fashion. That was particularly the case this past season, when there were so many fireworks overseas; it was hard to grab a headline with multiple megawatt designer debuts across the industry\u2019s most historic houses in Paris and Milan. \u201cIt\u2019s true that New York often produces the most commercially minded and wearable collections of all of the fashion capitals,\u201d says Moda Operandi president April Hennig, offering a characterization often deployed as criticism. But is making clothes that women want to wear, and really do wear, a shortcoming? <\/p>\n

Ashlyn is one of just a handful of New York labels with women at the helm, along with Rachel Scott\u2019s Diotima<\/a> and Daniella Kallmeyer\u2019s Kallmeyer<\/a>, that have been quietly, doggedly, and independently creating wardrobes to fit the needs of real women\u2019s lives. They are not reinterpreting 100-year-old codes of dressing, and perhaps that\u2019s a blessing. They design intuitively, based on their own lived experiences and the experiences of those around them. And that kind of specificity always resonates more universally than any disingenuous attempt to appeal to a wide swath of people. <\/p>\n

\"fashionMaxime La<\/p>\n

Ashlynn Park in her studio.<\/p>\n

Over the course of her influential decades-long tenure at J.Crew, Jenna Lyons<\/a> became known as the woman who dressed America, convincing everyone of the merits of styling sequined skirts with white T-shirts. But these days, when she wants to get dressed herself, Lyons often reaches for a trench or separates from the brand Kallmeyer. For her, it\u2019s never about the latest runway It item. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I like about Daniella Kallmeyer\u2019s work is that there is a restraint; I never feel like I am wearing a costume,\u201d says Lyons, who has doubled down on a uniform of vintage denim and classic tailoring that is never too fussy or too done and that always has a frisson of sex appeal. In a Kallmeyer trench with an upturned collar that she has paired with cherry-red tights and coordinating pumps, Lyons is the coolest person in the room\u2014because she looks like herself. <\/p>\n

\"fashionCourtesy Kallmeyer\/\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

From left: Jenna Lyons in Kallmeyer, Janicza Bravo in Kallmeyer, four runway looks from Kallmeyer Spring 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe raison d\u2019\u00eatre of the brand has always come from a very personal place of how I was raised, how I dressed, what I was looking for in my own sense of expression or identity,\u201d says Kallmeyer, who launched her line, which is rooted in wardrobe essentials, in 2012. \u201cI like to say this is a brand designed by a queer woman. This is not a queer brand. But as such, my sense of tailoring, my sense of dress, my sense of placement in the world makes it so that when we do design a dress, it\u2019s not leaning into a traditional sense of femininity but how do you feel in a dress? And really, you should feel as strong and as sexy and have as much ownership over your body in a dress as in a suit.\u201d (Clearly, the feeling is being felt. Kallmeyer is one of Moda Operandi\u2019s fastest-selling brands.) <\/p>\n

Opening a boutique on the Lower East Side in 2019 gave Kallmeyer a chance to observe her customers up close. \u201cI do so much people-watching in a not-creepy way,\u201d she says. \u201cIt can be something as simple as, like, \u2018Oh, it was cold today, so she wore a turtleneck under her shirt.\u2019 And that\u2019s a really cool styling thing, but the only turtlenecks I can find are too thick. And so we should probably make the most gorgeous thin turtleneck that is intended to be styled underneath a button-down.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"aMaxime La<\/p>\n

Daniella Kallmeyer in her studio.<\/p>\n

Problem-solving is at the root of American sportswear, a tradition that began in the 1930s, when designers like Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell introduced clothing that prioritized ease and practicality (Separate pieces! With pockets!) without compromising on style. They laid the foundation for the great American sportswear designers of the \u201980s and \u201990s, including Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, and Donna Karan. But if these industry titans built worlds and lifestyles and invited you in, it was designers like Maria Cornejo and Rachel Comey who, a decade or two later, evolved these classic tropes into something more idiosyncratic, more expressive. They engineered collections that felt less prescriptive and more personal. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about a pair of knickers with my name on them,\u201d says Cornejo. \u201cIt was actually about the clothes being worn in real life.\u201d You don\u2019t buy into their worlds. They carve out a niche, one that is earned, in yours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen want to wear something that feels good to them,\u201d says Sherri McMullen, founder of San Francisco\u2019s McMullen boutique, \u201cnot because someone is saying that there\u2019s this cookie-cutter way of dressing.\u201d In early 2021, McMullen got a text from a friend, the designer Christopher John Rogers, telling her she had to check out a new brand called Diotima. She scheduled a Zoom call with Rachel Scott, the Jamaican designer behind the label, who showed McMullen her smart yet sensual pieces, full of ornate crochet work, relaxed tailoring, and subtle embellishment\u2014clothes that are, according to Scott, \u201cbuttoned up and then kind of undone at the same time.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t think I could ever feel sexy in a corset,\u201d Scott says. \u201cYou can embody eroticism and intellectualism at one time, and one does not negate the other.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"diotima\"Shutterstock\/\/LAUNCHMETRICS SPOTLIGHT<\/p>\n

From left: four runway looks from Diotima Spring 2026, Tamu McPherson in Diotima, Greta Lee in Diotima.<\/p>\n

That point of view felt refreshing to McMullen. She bought nearly all of that first collection, and Diotima is now one of her top-selling brands. Scott has since been recognized as the CFDA\u2019s 2024 American Womenswear Designer of the Year and the winner of Fashion Trust U.S.\u2019s 2025 Ready-to-Wear Award. In September, she was tapped to succeed Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez as Proenza Schouler\u2019s creative director<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scott, who worked under Comey for seven years, feels a great responsibility in dressing women. \u201cYou want to provide for needs and desires,\u201d she explains, \u201cbut then you also want to surprise, to give people an unexpected experience, and find a way to encompass these complexities without flattening people.\u201d When you don\u2019t treat your customers as archetypes and instead acknowledge both their needs and nuances, you create interesting uniforms for them to live their lives in. <\/p>\n

\"fashionMaxime La<\/p>\n

Rachel Scott in her studio.<\/p>\n

Anja Tyson, a New York\u2013based consultant who collects both Ashlyn and Diotima, observes, \u201cI think some brands primarily design for women who have very full lives, and some primarily design for women who have very thin bodies. When you design for a person instead of a shape, you are inherently going to design into that person feeling confident and empowered in their clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

These pieces resonate because they are devoid of ego; in them, the wearer can simply feel like the best version of herself. Just ask Annie Jean-Baptiste, best-selling author and director of universal product development at Google, who just bought an \u201cincredible\u201d organza waistcoat from Diotima. \u201cWhen I wear her garments, I feel powerful, confident, and graceful,\u201d she says. \u201cThey allow me to then focus on other important things in my life and in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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