If you’ve been resistant to relinquish the home-bound couch-bound clothes we all got used to wearing at the height of the pandemic, you’re in good comfy company. Megan Chiarello’s Hamptons’s based athleisure business, Leallo, is here to help you continue to look cute when you’re trying to remain cuddly. And on March 2nd, her Leallo collaboration with Sag Harbor’s maven of marvelous, Joey Wölffer, releases to the world at large, bringing a little fashionable Parisian flair to this Hamptons-born brand.
The Joey Wöllfer x Leallo Meadow Club sweatshirts add a touch of French throw-back fashion, with vintage lace collars Wölffer sourced on a recent trek to Paris stitched into the neckline of each Peruvian cotton piece. The limited-edition line is named for Southampton’s storied Meadow Club, nodding perhaps to the year the exclusive, members-only tennis hub was founded: 1887, the final decades of the lacy-neck Victorian era. But as the project is a collaboration from two female-founded companies and March is Women’s History Month, the pretty necklines on the limited-edition tops are more appropriately akin to Ruth Bader Ginsberg gumption.
Wölffer’s store (11 Madison Street) is known for its mix of modern and vintage cool, and the collaboration with her friend seemed like a natural fit. “I’ve always admired Megan as a fellow female business owner. I love the quality of her collection,” Wölffer says. “And as two Hamptons women, it was perfect synergy.”
For Chiarello, the idea of creating fashion that offers not just freedom of movement, but fair-trade manufacturing, is an important part of the brand’s ethos, ensuring that from start to finish Leallo is giving instead of depleting.
The clothes, which are sold both wholesale and in her Sag store, Sunny (83 Main Street), are made in a Fair Trade Certified factory from Peruvian, pre-shrunk cotton. The dyes she employs, too, require minimal water consumption, so from start to fashion finish, the product links positive work right on down the line.
“I’ve always admired Joey’s style and was thrilled to join forces with her to create something special,” says Chiarello, who founded her company in 2015. “By collaborating on this project, I see us celebrating the incredible potential of female entrepreneurs and the unique, creative style that we both bring to our clients and Sag Harbor. ”
