Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, 99; ran bridal gown empire
Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, who with her husband, Jack, built the empire of tulle and satin known as Kleinfeld’s, a bridal superstore that for decades drew women from all over the world to the unlikely locale of Bay Ridge, a neighborhood in New York City’s Brooklyn borough, died March 29 in Manhattan. She was 99.
The cause was an intestinal blockage, her son Robert Schachter said.
I. Kleinfeld & Son, as it was formally known, was a family business, originally a small fur concern started by Ms. Schachter’s father, Isadore Kleinfeld. But it was Ms. Schachter, known as Miss Hedda, and her husband — although his initials were J.S., was nonetheless known as Mr. K. — who expanded it into what would become perhaps the largest and most famous bridal emporium in the world.
Patricia Leigh Brown, writing in The New York Times in 1987, described it as a store “that is to wedding gowns what the Pentagon is to fighter bombers.”
For Miss Hedda and Mr. K., it was a seamless ascent from Persian lamb pelts to clouds of tulle. In the late 1960s, when they began, wedding dresses were mostly limited variations on traditional themes found in department stores and small boutiques. It was Miss Hedda’s innovation, noting the changing appetites of the times, to offer as many styles as possible, which she traveled the world to find.
Back home, she assembled an army of stylists, fitters, sewers, beaders, and pressers to customize the offerings for each wouldbe bride. And each year, thousands of women would make the pilgrimage to Bay Ridge from as far away as Hong Kong and Nigeria.
“Young women and their retinues, a veritable bridal wave, wait in the lobby, some clutching dog-eared bridal magazines,” Brown wrote of a typical Saturday at Kleinfeld’s. “They are in pursuit of their wedding day ‘aura.’ They await the wisdom of Miss Judith, Miss Iman, Miss Irene, Miss Flo and the other Kleinfeld bridal consultants who, ferreting through the store’s 800 or so wedding-dress styles (by appointment only), will help them find the dress. The one that makes them look, Miss Flo said, as if they ‘came down from a cloud.’”
That cloud, however, was freighted with a multitude of existential choices: satin, brocade, lace, or chiffon? Beaded or embroidered? How about both? Ragamuffin sleeve or sculptured? Illusion neckline or a portrait collar? What about a hip sash, a bolero jacket, or an enormous taffeta bow? There were headpieces to be mulled over — the tiaras, crowns, and “starters” (mini-tiaras on a comb) — and veil lengths to ponder, including but not limited to cathedral, bird cage, and fingertip.
Miss Hedda oversaw the whole operation like a benevolent matriarch, addressing her team through overhead speakers while Mr. K. kept the books, manually and with precision, in his office upstairs, which was also the Schachters’ apartment.
For years, the setting was a no-frills affair, an 11,000-squarefoot dappled pink maze of dressing rooms, storage closets, and waiting areas. In 1987, the Schachters hired high-end architect Peter Marino to glam up the place.
Marino gave it an elegant new entryway and a neoclassical stone facade, because, as he said at the time, “marriage is a neoclassical institution.” He wasn’t able to do too much more, he said in a phone interview, because the Schachters were constitutionally unable to stop the business long enough for a proper renovation.
In any case, Marino and Miss Hedda became lifelong friends. “I adored her,” he said. “She was extremely genuine. She had zero artifice, which is so unusual in life. It’s so relaxing.”
Hedda Kleinfeld was born Feb. 5, 1924, in Vienna, the older of two daughters. Her father worked in his family’s fur business; her mother, Regina (Reich) Kleinfeld, was a milliner.
Their story turned grimly familiar in 1938, when the Nazis annexed Austria and seized Jewish businesses such as the Kleinfelds’. In November, on what came to be known as Kristallnacht, they ransacked Jewish homes.
Isadore, like many other Jewish men, was sent to Dachau; he was released four months later. The family sailed to Cuba, where they remained for two years, waiting for an American sponsor to secure visas for the United States.
By 1940, they were settled in Brooklyn. Regina found work at Lily Daché, a milliner with movie-star clientele who was known for her turbans. Isadore began working out of the family’s new apartment, making what are known as Persian paw plates — lamb pelts sewn together to make a single sheet of fur — and hired a young man named Jacob Schachter, known as Jack, to help him.
Jack and Hedda fell in love, and they married in 1941. She was 17 and still in high school, and he was 21.
Isadore’s fur business was successful, and soon they had a small store, then a larger one, named I. Kleinfeld & Son — that would be Jack — from which Isadore, Hedda, and Jack sold furs and Regina’s hats, and, later, cloth coats and evening gowns. Hedda sought out the fashionable clothing for which Kleinfeld’s became known, adding a bridal selection in 1968 that became so popular that she ended up devoting the store solely to that market.
The family soon bought five storefronts along Bay Ridge’s Fifth Avenue and combined them into one bridal superstore. In 1988, the Times reported, they sold about 7,500 wedding gowns and 10,000 bridesmaid dresses.
The Schachters sold the business in 1990.
In addition to her son Robert, Miss Hedda is survived by another son, Ronald; three granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren. Jack Schachter died in 2008.