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Bklyn’s Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, Holocaust Survivor & Bridal Empire Mogul, Dies at 99
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, Holocaust survivor and builder of the successful bridal gown empire, passed away in Manhattan on March 29, at the age of 99.
The bridal industry pioneer was born in Vienna in 1924 to an upper-middle class secular Jewish family. During the early stages of the Holocaust, her father was sent briefly to the Dachau concentration camp, along with her brother for trying to cross the border into Belgium. As per JTA, after that, her family tried to leave the country by getting fake visas to secure passage to Shanghai. When that plan failed, the family fled to Havana, Cuba, where she spent her teenage years. T
Though those early years of her life in Vienna and her escape to Havana must have shaped who she became in life, her family says she didn’t like to open up about those memories too much. “She really tried to suppress those memories and box them up and say that was a past life,” her granddaughter, Ilana Schachter, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “She did not share a lot of experiences from that time period, but she did have happy memories of being a teenager in Havana, which I can only imagine was quite a trip.” About three years ago, Hedda donated her family letters and other papers from the Holocaust era and was filmed by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for its archives.
Her father Isidor had a Viennese fur business. “Miss Hedda”, as she was called, continued her father’s business, beginning in the late 1960s and for the next several decades. As per JTA, she ran Kleinfeld Bridal with her husband Jack Schachter, a talented fur cutter who had worked by her dad. She had a keen eye for fashion and business, and she pivoted the company away from furs and other dresses, to focus on bridal dresses. She successfully transformed the once modest Bay Ridge, Brooklyn storefront into a multi-million dollar empire.
The iconic bridal store now boasts some 250 employees and a 35,000 square feet showroom on Third Avenue. The Kleinfeld name, which spans coast to coast, boasts the largest selection of wedding dresses in the world. Starting in 2007, the famed reality TV show, “Say Yes to the Dress” debuted giving viewers an inside picture of Kleinfeld’s Manhattan-based bridal salon. The TLC show is now enjoying its 22th season, though Hedda Kleinfeld never paid much attention to it.
“She really built Kleinfeld not only as an iconic name but she left an incredible mark on the whole industry with her vision,” Mara Urshel, one of the current co-owners of Kleinfeld, told Women’s Wear Daily.
“I think she appreciated being a part of an industry that was about celebration,” Schachter said of her late grandmother. “There was a sacred act in designing clothing and wearing clothing and honoring the clothing as you wore it,” Schachter said. “And she brought that into her work but also that’s just the way she saw the world.”
Kleinfeld’s husband Jack died in 2008 at age 87. She is survived by their sons, Ronald and Robert, as well as their grandchildren.
