In 1940 they settled in Brooklyn. Regina found work with Lily Daché, the milliner for the movie star clientele known for her turbans. Isadore began working out of the family’s new apartment, making what are known as Persian paw plates — lambskins sewn together to make a single sheet of fur — and hired a young man named Jacob Schachter, known as Jack, to help him to assist.
Jack and Hedda fell in love and they married in 1941. She was 17 and still in high school, and he was 21. As she recalled in an oral history for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it was illegal to get married and be present. school, so Jack always dropped her off a block away in his Pontiac.
Isadore’s fur trade was successful, and soon they had a small shop, then a larger one, called I. Kleinfeld & Son – that would be Jack – from which Isadore, Hedda and Jack sold furs and Regina’s hats and later cloth jackets and evening dresses. It was Hedda who went after the fashionable clothing that Kleinfeld’s became known for, adding a bridal collection in 1968 that became so popular that she eventually dedicated the store exclusively 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 New York Times reported, they sold about 7,500 bridal gowns and 10,000 bridesmaid dresses.
The Schachters sold the company in 1990, although they stayed for some time to help with the transition. They also moved – to the other Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan – to an apartment designed by Mr. Marino.
After their departure, Kleinfeld’s financial problems continued until the late 1990s, when it was bought by a group that included Mara Urshel, a retail executive; Ronald Rothstein, a venture capitalist; and Wayne Rogers, the actor best known for his role as Trapper John in ‘M*A*S*H’.
In 2005, when the new owners moved the store to 20th Street in Manhattan, Diane Cardwell wrote in The New York Times that the departure was a seismic blow to the former neighborhood, akin to Brooklyn losing to the Dodgers again. (To ease the commute of the store’s many Brooklyn-based employees, the owners rented buses for a time to transport them to and from the new location.) In 2007, Kleinfeld’s (now known as Kleinfeld Bridal) began its dizzying reality show “Say Yes to the Dress”, which is still on the air.
