Kelly Gallagher Bio
Kelly Gallagher is an American Playboy model, glamour model, and interior designer. She was born Kelly Wearstler on November 21, 1967, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States. Her zodiac sign is Scorpio. She used the name Kelly Gallagher for her Playboy appearance.
Kelly Gallagher was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for September 1994. She was 26 years old when the issue was published. Her centerfold and accompanying pictorial were photographed by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda.
Her Playmate Data Sheet listed her measurements as 34C-24-35, with a height of 5 feet 6 inches and a weight of 105 pounds. She has blue eyes and brown hair.
Raised in Myrtle Beach, Kelly developed an early interest in design through her mother, who worked as a designer and operated her own business. Kelly recalled rearranging furniture as a child and later identified owning a design and furnishings company as her principal professional ambition.
She attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where she studied interior and graphic design and also took architecture courses. While completing her education, she worked as a waitress and gained professional experience through internships with Cambridge Seven Associates in Boston and graphic designer Milton Glaser in New York.
Kelly moved to Los Angeles in her mid-twenties with the intention of working as a film set decorator. She obtained production-design experience but decided that the irregular schedule of film work was incompatible with the stable professional life she wanted. By the time of her Playboy feature, she had begun taking freelance decorating assignments and was preparing to establish her own design studio.
In 1994, while working as a hostess at a Beverly Hills restaurant, she was approached about posing for Playboy. Appearing under the name Kelly Gallagher, she became the magazine’s September 1994 Playmate and subsequently appeared in several Playboy video productions. She later said that the earnings helped her repay student loans and finance the beginning of her design business.
She founded Kelly Wearstler Interior Design in the mid-1990s and became particularly influential through her work on luxury hotels, private residences, restaurants, and commercial interiors. Her early hospitality projects included the Avalon and Maison 140 in Beverly Hills, followed by interiors for the Viceroy hotel group and The Tides in Miami Beach. Her approach became associated with dramatic combinations of color, scale, pattern, vintage furnishings, and contemporary art.
Wearstler expanded her practice into furniture, lighting, textiles, decorative objects, and other product categories. She has published five design books, including Modern Glamour: The Art of Unexpected Style, Domicilium Decoratus, Hue, Rhapsody, and Evocative Style. She also served as a judge on both seasons of Bravo’s interior-design competition Top Design.
Her professional recognition includes appearances on Architectural Digest’s AD100 and Elle Decor’s A-List, as well as inclusion in Time magazine’s Design 100 and Wallpaper’s selection of leading interior designers. She also became the first interior designer to teach a dedicated MasterClass course.
