Whether you know her from Project Runway, her TLC reality show Bride By Design, or you’re one of the lucky brides to don one of her wedding gowns for your big day, Heidi Elnora has been a force in the fashion industry and Birmingham for over two decades. She founded Birmingham Fashion Week and led the stunning renovation of the historic building on Morris Avenue that housed her bridal studio, Heidi Elnora Atelier. Despite her booming business, Heidi decided to retire from wedding gowns, but that doesn’t mean she’s slowing down. Here’s the scoop on what she’s up to and what’s next!
Brides, Buildings, and Business: How it Started
Despite a seemingly glamorous entry into the fashion world, Heidi’s career has seen its fair share of twists and turns. A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, she was living in Atlanta following her Project Runway debut when she was hit by a drunk driver, altering the course of her life.
“The drunk driver was kind of like my wake-up call,” Heidi tells us, “because I would have probably stayed in Atlanta and tried to climb the corporate ladder. But it just really wasn’t God’s plan for me.” Instead, she returned to her home state of Alabama, where she found her way to wedding gown design.
At first, designing wedding dresses was a pragmatic decision more than anything else. “I knew that I had to create something that was easy in terms of fabric,” she says, explaining that she couldn’t afford to source tons of different materials along with handling mass production.
Instead, she decided that she could keep classic materials and fabrics on hand and turn them into works of art, focusing on special pieces her customers could cherish.
But it was a completely new venture. “I had designed one [wedding] dress in my entire life,” she shares. Still, that didn’t stop her from calling Alabama Weddings Magazine and pitching herself as a wedding dress designer. It worked. The magazine took one look at her work and agreed to a four-page spread. “That was it. The decision was made,” Heidi recalls.
Building an Alabama Legacy: Preserving Historic Buildings and Supporting Female Entrepreneurs
Heidi dressed brides around the globe from her stunning Birmingham studio, and purchasing the building itself was another dream-come-true.
“My great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mom would all drive or ride the bus from the country into the big city of Birmingham and go shopping,” she says. “They couldn’t afford the clothes, so they would go to be inspired. My grandmother would come home and use grocery sacks to make patterns to make her own things. I wanted to prove to these women before me that we finally made it.”
When she first laid eyes on the run-down building on Morris Avenue, Heidi says it was love at first sight. “I just thought, This is it” she says, “It just felt calm. It was an immediate response.”
This was long before the recent revitalization of the now buzzing downtown street, and there had been talks of tearing down the 1890s building before Heidi stepped in. Upon learning the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, she decided to restore it to its historic standards — a painstaking process. “I was there every day with a hard hat with these boys, like a crazy person,” she tells us. “But every single detail of that building was part of my soul.”
Not everyone was convinced Morris Avenue was the best place for her studio, but Heidi trusted her intuition. “I believe the motto, ‘build it and they will come,’” Heidi says. “If I put the effort into it, people will come for my talent.”
And they did.
As other businesses moved into the area, Heidi eventually felt she had served her purpose in Birmingham. “I had done my due diligence with creating a space for aspiring artists and people to really grow in their crafts, and I saved a piece of history, and so I just had a great peace about it when I decided it was time to move on,” she says.
Still Johnson Interiors has been a tenant of Heidi’s on Morris Avenue for the past five years, and she is excited to pass off her studio space to another female entrepreneur. Heidi also restored a retail space in Huntsville’s Historic Five Points district, which housed her Build-A-Bride brand until she sold the building to another woman-owned business.
New Goals and Lifelong Dreams
Heidi’s Build-A-Bride brand is the source of one of her hardest lessons as an entrepreneur and has deeply informed her next chapter. Ten years ago, she was excited to take her buildable bridal silhouettes to the Today Show to introduce her new concept for designing and building wedding dresses for different body types using interchangeable pieces. Looking back, Heidi remembers the hosts joking that her brilliant idea was so good, someone was bound to copy it. They weren’t wrong.
“Little did I know that I would lose hundreds of millions of dollars from being knocked off by designers of the world over the next 10 years,” Heidi says. Understandably, she has been keeping her next venture heavily under wraps … but we’ve got the scoop!
With trademarks filed and patents secured, Heidi is preparing to launch her new lifestyle brand, Pep Gally. Blending high fashion and interior design, Heidi is still keeping the details “safe inside her head,” but her excitement and passion for Pep Gally is palpable.
A brand “designed for the high-spirited,” Heidi says her inspiration for Pep Gally struck during her son’s pep rally. She recalled her own days as a cheerleader and athlete in school. “I just felt this energy. Something just grabbed a hold of me, and it reminded me of times when things were fun — without the stress of creating a couture piece that has to be perfect, perfect, perfect,” she says.“It was just another kind of awakening moment for me.”
Pep Gally’s logo is a simple megaphone, which Heidi says represents her speaking up and being a light for others. She’s had the chance to do that through her TV work, her business, and now she’s even writing a memoir to share the whole story. “It’s a tell-all, and I hope my strength and story encourage other women and girls to find strength in themselves and their story,” she says. “There have been so many times that I have been silenced to make others feel comfortable. This book is my time to speak.”
Heidi laughs, explaining that some friends have been concerned by her recent career change. “They think, Oh my gosh, what’s happened to her? She sold her buildings. Now she’s making sweatshirts,” she jokes. But she assures us the best is yet to come.
Though making no promises, Heidi hints that perhaps it’s time for a new reality show. “When I was 25, I was on Project Runway, she says. “When I was 35, I filmed Bride By Design. Now that I’m 45, I think I’m ready for another reality show.”
“One thing’s certain,” Heidi says with a smile, “this story is by no means over.”
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