What you should know
- Eight months ago, a 35-year-old woman was found dead in her Manhattan bed. New York police identified her as Kathryn Marie Gallagher and said her death was ruled a homicide.
- It’s unclear what killed Gallagher, an acclaimed fashion designer who had more than two dozen collections under her own label and showed them at Fashion Week in both New York and Paris, according to her obituary. She was working on a fall 2022 collection when she died.
- Lady Gaga and Laverne Cox are among the celebrities who donned her designs, Gallagher’s sisters wrote in an obituary shared on the alumni page of the Rhode Island School of Design, which she attended.
NEW YORK — It was July 24, 2022. New York City Police officers responding to a 9-1-1 call at a Manhattan apartment building found a 35-year-old woman unconscious in a bedroom. She had no obvious signs of trauma.
On Friday, eight months to the day she was found, police identified the woman as Kathryn Marie Gallagher, a Pennsylvania-born painter and “internationally recognized fashion designer,” according to her obituary.
And they declared his case a homicide.
The medical examiner’s office did not immediately respond to an email request for a cause of death on Friday.
Gallagher was found in a bed in her Eldridge Street apartment shortly before 9:00 pm that summer night in July. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to an obituary posted on the alumni page of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, Gallagher established her own fashion line, Katie Gallagher, in New York City in 2010. She has completed more than two dozen collections under that label that it premiered during New York and Paris Fashion Weeks and had been working on her 27th collection at the time of her death. Her sisters wrote that she had planned to show that collection in the fall of 2022.
The obituary, shared by her sisters, says she has dressed models like Lady Gaga and Laverne Cox, and says her work has appeared in magazines like Vogue, “The Cut,” “Elle” and “Glamour” over the years. . Gallagher moved to Chinatown after attending RISD after a childhood in rural Pennsylvania, and it was there that she honed her craft, she said.
The sisters described an intrepid designer committed to excellence, with heart and tact, so gently magnanimous that she appealed to people and even animals.
“Like AA Milne’s Eeyore, she preferred gloomy days and cold rain. As a child, she was drawn to the forest, mixing potions and playing there with her sisters. Animals were drawn to her gentle and calm demeanor. He could talk to them and once even touched a deer in the stillness of the trees. He loved poetry and heavy metal,” his obituary read. “She felt deeply, though she couldn’t always express it, and she had a huge, forgiving heart. When she was younger, she was a state-qualifying obsessive athlete, gymnast, and long-distance runner. Katie loved Halloween, witches, and ghosts, and had tattoos for everyone to know.”
“She was unique, beautiful, smart, cheeky and always wanting. She was hardworking and talented, with so many ideas and plans for future projects,” the sisters’ recollection continued. “We are so proud of who she was and all that she accomplished in her brief but full and beautiful life. She was Katie, our daughter, sister, aunt and friend.”
A memorial for Gallagher was held in Pennsylvania last August.
Anyone with information about Gallagher’s case is asked to call police at 1-888-57-PISTA.
