“To be honest, I’m no sneakerhead,” says Daniella Kallmeyer, the New York designer known for her sophisticated and sensual takes on tailoring and urbane sportswear separates. And yet athletics—particularly women’s sports—has become a more central part of her life over the last decade or so, she says, in part because of her ongoing engagement with the players themselves.
That has caused her, she says, “to really fall in love with sports from the lens of the athlete.” Today, Kallmeyer is solidifying that love not with a ring, but a shoe. The designer is revealing a sneaker collaboration with Nike: a sleek update to Nike’s Tennis Centre style, which she has rendered in a putty-colored suede and finished with antiqued hardware details.
“When this opportunity came about,” she says, “I really asked myself, ‘Well, how can we refine an iconic, classically sports-driven silhouette and fold it into the wardrobe of the Kallmeyer woman?’” This is not Kallmeyer’s first dalliance with the mega brand. It was Australian tennis player Rennae Stubbs who initially introduced the designer to women’s basketball and ultimately connected her to Nike, which then led to the brand hosting Cafe Kallmeyer during WNBA All-Star Weekend last summer.
The shoe was originally designed for tennis and, the current US Open mania aside, the sport is indeed having a moment in both pop culture (think the film Challengers) and fashion. “Everybody's excited about tennis,” Kallmeyer says.
“And I think that's such a beautiful, exciting, and interesting thing. Having just gone through this Knicks final with the city, I love seeing that same thing that's now happening across cultures and industries because of tennis.” Kallmeyer’s take is decidedly elegant and streamlined, adding a subtle bit of patina to an already rather restrained footwear style.
“What’s cool about the direction that we took is it’s not a performance shoe—it’s a lifestyle shoe,” Kallmeyer explains. “I think that [tennis culture has] a lot of overlap with my community, my clientele, and my personal interests, especially if you think more about tennis as a spectator rather than as a sport.
In general, there’s a refinement to tennis. There is an excellence to tennis as a sport and as a medium.” “We really stripped this shoe down to its core and rebuilt it from materiality, craftsmanship, and a very raw place of craft and style,” Kallmeyer continues.
“We did a custom color we’re calling ‘travertine,’ in suede. I think what’s really fun about the way that we made this shoe is that the craft is so visible.
It’s not about all of these style lines, it’s not about all of these pop colors, color blocking, or what you might imagine from the other end of the spectrum of sport or tennis, which is very bright and vibrant. This is very neutral and really about the material and the construction.” To that point, its details are subtle, like a blanket stitch that hugs the back of the heel and the monochromatic color, which emphasizes the subtlety of the nubby textile, which she imagines will slowly weather with time and use.
“I really love the idea that this shoe is going to become more yours the more you wear it—this very lived-in suede.” To highlight the Tennis Centre, Kallmeyer assembled a formidable creative team, including the artist and photographer Collier Schorr, to capture tennis player Amanda Anisimova and art dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn wearing the sneaker. “There are two contrasting styling moments that we embraced for Amanda specifically,” Kallmeyer says.
“One was much more stripped down, where we put her in a backless halter silhouette. I really wanted her body and her strength and power to be what the silhouette was about.
And then the other was reinterpreting classic tennis whites, but with a lot of exaggeration in the silhouette and layering, and really showing the shoe as a lifestyle shoe.” Greenberg Rohatyn, then, “represents the world that Kallmeyer represents: that you can love tennis, you can play tennis, you can be a tennis spectator, you can love what it means to support excellence, and particularly women of excellence in this field. And it can really overlap with a different culture or community or craft.” “It just represents, to me,” Kallmeyer adds, “everything that this kind of intersection was really all about.” Nike x Kallmeyer Tennis Centre is $160 and is available at nike.com, kallmeyer.nyc, and select retailers.