Cally Rieman is a New York based clothing designer presenting her
KAL RIEMAN Fall 2010 women’s ready to wear collection. Beginning
in 2009 with a small capsule collection, Cally has been establishing a
following of private clients and expanding the collection to meet the
needs of the retail environment.
Having worked in the fashion industry for nearly ten years in both
women’s wear and men’s wear, her clothing is marked by the
breadth of her experience, “tough and chic, austerity without
pretense. I design clothing for women that embodies the sartorial
grace and ease that makes men’s wear so powerful.”
Born the youngest of five children in a blue-collar family in Ohio, she learned the value of
perseverance and industry at an early age. Her father was a machinist and her mother
worked nights as a police officer while running the household by day. An avid swimmer
and athlete, Cally modeled herself after her mother, managing a full schedule to meet all
her ambitions. Transforming her hand-me-downs into her own tomgirl style, she began to
create her aesthetic of working class elegance.
Cally took an unconventional path into the world of fashion, graduating from Denison
University in 1993 with a degree in East Asian Studies and Political Science. Her interest
in fashion began during a study program in Taiwan, where she taught English to the owner
of a textile manufacturing and marketing company. After graduation, she spent four years
working in finance before pursuing a degree in Fashion Design at The Institute of Chicago.
Her design career began with an internship at Jean Charles de Castelbajac in Paris working
on the men’s and women’s wear collections, developing an appreciation for traditional
tailoring filtered through his whimsical take on pop culture. She landed in New York in
2001 as a design assistant for Rubin Chapelle’s women’s wear collection, absorbing their
elegant, avant-garde sensibility. As a designer for Hilfiger’s H men’s line, she solidified her
experience in tailored goods and began to work towards starting her own collection. She
has always admired the strength and simplicity that makes men’s wear so strong and set
out to build a collection that mirrored that same sophistication for women.
