Designer Katie Gallagher: A Very New York City Story
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New York City-based designer Katie Gallagher was crafting her latest signature collection, prior to her unexpected death last month, and now friends, relatives, former classmates and fellow creatives are trying to ensure it will be completed and seen.
Raised in a downturned, former coal mining town in Pennsylvania, Gallagher’s steely determination, quiet resolve and tireless tinkering allowed her to forge into New York City’s already crowded, and sometimes cut-throat, fashion industry. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009, she decamped for Manhattan, interning with Anna Sui at one point and modeling here and there for Gap Japan, Ray-Ban and other brands.
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Born Kathryn Marie Gallagher in DuBois, Pennsylvania, Gallagher and her three sisters later moved with their parents — a history teacher father and a registered nurse mother — to State College. A funeral service was held for Gallagher there on Aug. 4 at the Our Lady of Victory Church. A New York City memorial is being planned for the 35-year-old designer, who died on July 23 in her Chinatown apartment.
A hint of her Leo-leaning work habits was evident in Gallagher’s most recent tattoo that depicted Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, with seven being the biblical reference to completion and perfection. Without any brothers, the imaginative band of sisters ran around in the woods together, enjoyed storytelling and learned to stick up for themselves, according to the designer’s sister Lara. They were encouraged by their parents to find what they love to do and to never give up. A video that was played as part of Gallagher’s eulogy last week included a home movie clip of her father “giving a lecture about not quitting on a coloring contest and quoting [Marlon Brando in the film] ‘On the Waterfront’ and how you could be a champion. He was really going on about it,” Lara Gallagher said. “It was cool. I think we were listening — for better or [for] worse.”
Ardent about holidays, especially Halloween, and visiting her parents, the designer woke up each day excited for whatever lay ahead — so much so that as a child she signaled that with a dinosaur call to let everybody know that she was up. “We’re ready and ‘Let’s do this.’” her mother Debra said Tuesday. “She always had to have a plan even for fun things. When she came home, we always had to have a plan.”
While Gallagher never ascended to international stardom or national fame, as some young designers do, she created her own storyline and maintained a certain ingenuity. One of her former RISD professors Meg DeCubellis said Tuesday, “She had her own style and vision. Yeah, living in the city is tough. The business side of things might have gotten to her more than anything. But her creativity and her craft was her savior. That’s what kept her going. Making and designing was how she navigated all of the other intensity of the fashion industry.”
Having met Gallagher in her interning days in 2007 and witnessed the wherewithal she put into 26 of her signature collections, Shan Reddy, chief operating officer of Prabal Gurung, said Tuesday via e-mail, “For me, Katie personified the work behind the work. More beautiful than any magazine editorial or collection review was her determination to work as a bartender, a florist, a seamstress or whatever it took to realize her truth and vision.”
He continued, “She’s the story of so many New Yorkers that come to the city with nothing, and give it everything, making it the place the world looks to for creativity, inspiration and most importantly, grit.”
Gallagher’s side gigs included bartending in Union Square with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez before the congresswoman ventured into politics.
While detectives from the New York City Police Department investigate her death, Gallagher’s family is trying to ensure that her final collection gets finished and is shown publicly, possibly as soon as this fall. Her sister Lara Gallagher said, “That’s been the only has solace really, trying to think about everything that meant so much to her, which was her work. Her life was her work. We really just want to honor that like it was a child left behind, because in a way, it really was.”
Once Gallagher’s laptop and phone are returned to her relatives, they expect to have a better handle on what her plans were for the collection’s production and presentation. A GoFundMe page has been started for the Katie Gallagher Legacy Fund, and as of Tuesday at noon more than $16,200 of the $50,000 goal had been raised. Funds will be used for the 2023 collection, the memorial, and future projects to preserve her legacy, celebrate her life’s work and boost other artists.
DeCubellis said Tuesday, “She was a really cool kid, who I think a lot of people could relate to [in that] I’m-creative, I-want-to-start-my-own-business [mind-set.] I just feel really badly that this is the way her story is ending here. A good friend of hers said to me recently, ‘Oh, we’re going to try to keep her business going.’ I’m hoping there is a way for somebody or a collective to keep her spirit going.”
Growing up, Gallagher had zero personal connections to anyone in the fashion industry and didn’t know anyone who was an artist, her sister Lara said. “Because it was such a wild dream, I think that motivated her more. She just wanted what she wanted, and she wanted to figure it out. She was just wildly creative and she had the work ethic to go along with it.”
At RISD, Katie Gallagher dreamt up a dress made entirely of metal springs. After the resource for the springs lost his house in a fire, the designer taught herself how to make the springs with a drill, rather than use an alternative material. “No matter what, something wasn’t going to fail because of her. It was going to be all the other variables. It wasn’t going to be because she couldn’t do it or couldn’t make it work or she didn’t have the money to do it,” her sister said.
Photographer William Eadon considered Gallagher to be an inspiration and a muse. At work on her spring 2023 lookbook, the pair had a shoot planned for July 24. Gallagher was street casting all of the subjects and the idea was to shoot the collection on downtown New York City girls, Eadon said. “We wanted every type of girl you could see and we wanted it to resonate personally with these women,” he said. “Sadly, we were never able to finish.”
Footwear designer Cindy Waters, who recently collaborated with Gallagher on shoes, said Gallagher “cultivated an experience that was about texture, sound and emotion. Her fashion shows debuted the collection, but they were also an art show, a performance piece and a concert. Her garments slithered along the body like water — froths of sheerness, droplets of shine.”
The designer was found in bed in her Chinatown apartment, and the toxicology report and autopsy results could take up to 12 weeks, according to Lara. NYPD officials did not respond to a media request Tuesday. The office of New York City’s chief medical examiner said Monday the case and manner of her death are pending further study at this time.
Gallagher’s sister said, “It just looks like she didn’t wake up. We just don’t know. It seems really unexpected. She was with friends that night. There were people, who saw her that night. She was texting with people. Everything seemed totally fine, just a regular night, nothing out of the ordinary. So we just don’t know.”
The industrious Gallagher launched her eponymous label in 2010 and continued to create collections through the years. Self-reliant, she handmade each of her designs using an industrial sewing machine and a household one that had been handed down from her paternal grandmother Evelyn. Her homegrown approach appealed to luminaries like Lady Gaga, Rita Ora, Laverne Cox and Daphne Guinness.
Gallagher was also an intricate pattern maker, artist and floral designer, partial to funereal ones. Bows, candy, heavy metal music, a Maine Coon cat and poetry were other passions. Uninterested in the comings and goings of fashion, she created “her own beautiful world that had nothing to do with what was in style at the moment,“ her former assistant Jordyn Payne said. “This world she created had me under its spell instantly. Her designs are often seen as dark and gothic, but she had this exceptional naïveté about the world that lended a wondrousness to her pieces.”
Gallagher liked to figure things out herself and did not like to depend on others,” said Lara Gallagher, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. The lithesome and elegiac Gallagher continued to run after moving to New York. Being a competitive cross county high school runner taught her how to “just dig in and put up with stuff and that grit and determination carried through to her work. No matter how hard stuff was she was just going to do it,” her sister said.
Reddy speculated that Gallagher’s daily runs helped her “shrug off and keep ahead of the exigencies of life in New York City.” he said. “Katie was calm, unassuming and deliberate. She was going to succeed, irrespective of the past, the present or what the future brought.”
DeCubellis said, “I find that athletes tend to be really good with the practice and routine [of apparel design,] always arriving early to class and willing to work really hard. Not just a matter of being talented or not, Gallagher knew how to work hard. That is what made her excel in anything that she did.”
Those athletic tendencies could also be seen in the leggings that were routinely featured in collection, including an early one called “Arena,” a goth-inspired, sexy range inspired by sports.
As for how Gallagher would want to be remembered, her sister Lara said, “I think she wanted to be known. She wanted everything, She was just always striving and always pushing. She was never satisfied. She wanted to be the best. You can see that in her work and in her patterns just how detail-oriented she was and how much she did all by herself year-after-year. So many people would have quit earlier.”
In addition to her mother and father Barry, Gallagher is survived by her grandmother Patricia “Bear” Kubatsky, her aforementioned sister Lara and two other sisters, Gwendolyn and Marlee.
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