Kallmeyer Just Made a Nike Tennis Sneaker You Can Wear With a Suit

Daniella Kallmeyer never imagined sports becoming part of her brand universe. In fact, the designer behind the New York label Kallmeyer admits that her budding relationship with athletics has taken even her by surprise. “I think that’s part of why I’ve embraced it so much. It’s been a little bit of a ‘What have I been missing all my life?’ moment for me,” she tells Marie Claire.

After Kallmeyer’s pop-up with Nike around the 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend, her work dressing New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello, and relationships with athletes including former tennis star Rennae Stubbs, that at-first-glance unexpected meeting of worlds is now taking physical form. On September 8, Kallmeyer and Nike released a new take on the Nike Centre, reimagining the tennis silhouette as a lifestyle sneaker that embodies the designer’s quietly luxurious point of view.

Kallmeyer's sports connection developed organically. Stubbs introduced Brondello to Kallmeyer, who has since become a New York Liberty fan; along the way, the designer discovered how naturally sports aligned with her brand's values. “The people that I surround myself with, we really believe in celebrating excellence, encouraging people’s success,” she says. “What better way to do that than through sports and the achievements of the miracles of the human body?”

A trip to the US Open with Nike last year ultimately set this project in motion. “We were talking about how there’s been this amazing rise in interest from fashion, arts, culture, [and] community in sports,” Kallmeyer recalls. “It’s something that brings people together. Soon after, Nike approached her about revisiting the shoe. “They said, ‘We want to revive this iconic tennis silhouette of our archive, and would you consider reimagining it for a relevant moment?’” she says of the partnership that dropped during the 2026 US Open. “I jumped at that opportunity. I love a prompt like that.”

Rather than completely redesigning the sneaker, Kallmeyer approached the Centre much as she does her collections—with restraint. “We stripped it back to its essence,” she says. From there, Kallmeyer focused on craftsmanship and construction: The back of the shoe features blanket hand-stitching, the tongue is made from suede, and the original style lines were reduced to just their function. The sneaker comes in a custom shade Kallmeyer calls “travertine,” a tonal neutral designed to shift depending on how it’s styled. “It’s this very raw-feeling color that is sort of shape-shifty,” she says.

The challenge was figuring out how to “take something that started as a true performance shoe and, without changing its true essence, evolve it into something that you can wear with all the elements of your wardrobe.” The result is an "elevated" sneaker designed to move through an everyday wardrobe: “You could wear it with suiting, you can wear it with denim.” That versatility also makes sense for its early-September arrival, when the US Open collides with New York Fashion Week. Kallmeyer calls the timing a “happy coincidence”—if an inconvenient one, given how many tennis matches preparing for her spring 2027 runway show has forced her to turn down.

The campaign makes the fashion-sports crossover even more explicit. Photographed by Collier Schorr, it stars tennis player Amanda Anisimova, who Kallmeyer watched and “rooted” for in last year’s US Open finals before Nike suggested her for the project. “She’s so inspiring,” says Kallmeyer. “She’s so young and powerful and such an amazing role model.”

For Kallmeyer, working with Anisimova offered a chance to explore something she has encountered through her past relationships with athletes. “The times [they] have to put their best foot forward [are] often in uniform,” Kallmeyer says. “They're on the world stage all the time. When they step off that stage, who do they want to be for themselves?”

It’s a question that extends beyond sports figures. “One of my favorite challenges when people come into my store [is] they’re trying to find out who they are outside of the costume that they have to be in in order to be perceived,” Kallmeyer says, using women in corporate environments—who may be used to wearing a suit to fit into a man’s world—as an example. “What does she actually feel most powerful in?”

That tension between uniform and individuality is part of what makes Anisimova such a natural fit for the collaboration. “Tennis has shaped so much of who I am, and one of the things I love about the sport is how it allows players to express their individuality,” Anisimova wrote in an email to Marie Claire. “That’s why this collaboration felt so personal to me. Daniella brought such a thoughtful perspective to the Nike Centre, creating something that feels elevated but still effortless and easy to wear. Being part of a campaign that celebrates the connection between sport, style and self-expression was incredible.”

The strongest endorsement, however, may have come after the campaign shoot wrapped up. Kallmeyer remembers Anisimova changing back into her own clothes and asking where she could get a pair of the sneakers. The team told her she could keep the ones she had been wearing. Later, Stubbs—who Kallmeyer credits with introducing her to tennis—ran into Anisimova at the US Open. She was still wearing them.

“She was like, ‘These are my new favorite shoes. I haven’t taken them off my feet,’” Kallmeyer recalls. “You can shoot all the fashion campaigns in the world, but it really comes down to those real moments. That spoke volumes for me about what the goal of this was all about.”

For Kallmeyer, that moment also reminded her how sports entered the brand—through “the lens of what it means as a community, what it means for women’s excellence, what it means for change and progress.” She explains: “I became more engaged in this world through friends who were fighting for pay equality and continue to fight for gender equality in their leagues.”

It’s a connection Kallmeyer is already interested in exploring further. “I’m hoping that this is the first of many conversations we have about Kallmeyer and sports,” she says. “It was a very organic blending of worlds, and we really believe in continuing in that direction.”

The Nike Centre x Kallmeyer is available through Kallmeyer, SNKRS, Shopbop, Net-a-Porter, and FWRD.