Marc Kalman's Still Kelly Label Is an Intentionally Slow Burn

Vogue

5 days ago

At first glance, Still Kelly is a vibes-based label. But that's no reason to dismiss it—if anything, it's a reason to look closer. The vibes are pretty high, after all.
Marc Kalman, a creative director and a quintessentially 21st century man-about-town—a term the soft spoken and endearingly shy designer probably wouldn't subscribe to—launched the label last October with a 39-piece collection. Today, the second delivery is dropping online at Ssense and on his website. Photographer Frank Lebon shot a lookbook for the occasion, starring super-in-the-making Mona Tougaard and model-cum-actor Paul Hameline. Pointing at a campaign image featuring a shirtless Hameline with a cigarette hanging from his lips, Kalman offers. 'I don't know what it does, but it does… something.'
Photo: Frank Lebon
Photo: Frank Lebon
Photo: Frank Lebon
Photo: Frank Lebon
Kalman's clothes have a similarly ineffable quality. This delivery features shrunken tees, cropped and extra-long tailored shorts, a great-looking lightweight longline coat, and a really good pair of pants with accent stitching hidden down the sideseams. They're the kind of things you see on cool, attractive people—folks like Kalman himself, or Tougaard, or Hameline—and think their beguiling charm stems from the fact that Kalman and his models look good in anything. But look closer at Kalman's fabrics and clothes, which he sources and makes all over, from Italy and Portugal to China—and it's clear they're well made, flattering, and pretty desirable. To quote the kids online these days, they have a certain aura.
A Florida native, Kalman has not always been a designer. He studied fashion and business at LIM College in New York. But after college he tried his hand at editorial, with an internship at Vogue Japan and a subsequent role at T magazine, before finding his way to the music industry where he handled creative direction for musicians. 'It was an opportunity to do everything,' he says, 'make clothes, covers, shoot things, do videos, all that.'
Photo: Marc Kalman
Photo: Frank Lebon
He commited to design about four years ago when he started working on the first Still Kelly collection. 'I just didn't want to make work for everyone else anymore,' he says, 'I wanted to make clothes.'
Kalman took his time with Still Kelly. The first collection was almost two years in the making. 'It was kind of bittersweet because it had been made so long before I released it that it didn't necessarily meet me where I was at,' he said. In a way ('in a big way,' he says) he had moved on from where he was at the beginning. He now knows that's just the way it is—designers work months in advance. 'My goal is to make that gap smaller,' he says. Nonetheless, Still Kelly is an intentional slow burn.