Susan Ruddie Spring’s career has spanned from working as a costume designer and textile artist to design and styling work in the bridal industry.
Today, she’s the owner and designer at The Wedding Dresser, which specializes in styling services for brides or any special event.
Services include alterations and customizations, vintage gown restoration and restyling, accessories styling, day-of-wedding dresser service, gown dyeing and painting, and post-wedding cleaning and preservation.
Ruddie Spring — who splits her time between her hometown of Pikesville and Brooklyn, New York — spoke recently to Jmore about her business.
Jmore: What is your background?
SRS: I was brought up by parents who loved theater. I started doing theater when I was a kid. My bat mitzvah present was a musical theater workshop for the summer.
I wanted to have a career working on Broadway musicals, and I just literally worked my way up from sewing, dyeing and making hats in costume shops because I was always crafty. My first job in New York City was a $5 an hour job as a textile artist, leaning over a 40-gallon kettle of boiling water, dyeing silk to look like burlap.
What came next?
I moved on to building crafty costumes for shows like ‘Cats’ and designing for off-off-Broadway and avant-garde operas. Then, I worked as an assistant designer for regional theater and dance. I continued to pursue my dream of working on Broadway, joining design teams for new Broadway musicals, managing costume shops and finally designing for national tours. I worked on everything from ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the movie ‘Mamma Mia!’ and the 25th anniversary tour of ‘Evita.’
How did you transition into the bridal industry?
In 2008, there was a strike on Broadway and the costume shop I was managing went from 75 people down to about 20. The economics of theater sort of collapsed around 2008.
I thought it would be fun to work at Kleinfeld Bridal, the biggest bridal salon in the country. They put me in the alterations department and had me appear on seasons two and three of ‘Say Yes to The Dress.’ It was there that I developed the idea of repurposing wedding dresses by dyeing or painting the dresses after the wedding or restyling vintage dresses.
A bride who was my neighbor asked if I would do alterations because she didn’t want to go to a tailor or dry cleaner. When someone on a local blog asked about bridal alterations, she responded with my information. That started my business.
How did your business grow?
I started making accessories and one-of-a-kind pieces for my brides. One of the brides wanted a beautiful but expensive designer feather jacket that was beyond her budget. So I made my first ostrich jacket, which she and I loved, and then I created an Etsy shop. I took my line wholesale showing my accessories at New York Bridal Fashion Week.
As I learned more about brides’ needs, I kept adding products and services. I saw that women still have the brunt of the wedding planning to do. They have a real life, and most have full-time jobs. … I just kept growing and growing into my current concept, a full-service styling studio offering ‘everything but the dress.’
I grew this business from my desk in my bedroom in [the Brooklyn neighborhood of] Park Slope to having a studio in a renovated factory complex with 12 to 15 employees during our busy season.
What’s it been like during the pandemic?
For most of the pandemic, we didn’t have a normal number of brides but we managed to stay open and I kept my team employed.
When people started having micro-weddings in the summer of 2020, little white dresses became a thing and so we shifted toward more casual accessories. Like many small businesses, we also built an online store carrying everything we have in the studio.
Now, big weddings and big dresses with ornate vintage details are in. We’re still seeing lots of outdoor weddings year-round so I’m designing warm evening jackets and offering them for rent as an easy, glamorous, last-minute add-on.
I’m starting a blog called ‘How to Buy a Wedding Dress, COVID Edition.’ With the supply chain issues, buying a dress this spring is going to be more challenging than ever. I want to get reliable information out there because I see brides go so wrong in so many ways and spend so much money.
What industry and societal shifts are you seeing coming out of the pandemic?
The one good thing that’s come out of COVID is that all of America seems to be on my page of making sure everybody gets paid a decent living wage. I’m a member of United Scenic Artists, a union for theater designers. We’ve been working for decades to raise the level of pay for costume professionals.
How do you approach working with brides?
I come at the bridal world with a very different experience and a very different skill set than what most people offer. We make sure dresses don’t just fit but flatter every kind of figure. I always say we’re not selling alterations and accessories, we’re selling confidence and a lack of stress. I’ve actually had reviews that called me “the Bride Whisperer.”
Tell us about your shop in Baltimore.
We opened our second location in Baltimore in 2021 in the house I grew up in. Our opening was delayed four times because of COVID. We had a bunch of brides this past season in Baltimore, and we’re growing with services like private personal shopping, event styling and our wedding dresser service, where a personal stylist will arrive fully equipped to help you get dressed on your wedding day. We’re really looking forward to going full steam into bridal this spring in Baltimore.
I’m excited to be able to meet the needs and tastes of my new neighbors, Baltimore’s observant Jewish community, by creating stylish build-ups, custom veils, modest jackets, tiaras and crowns.
How does being Jewish inform your work?
Though I was raised in a modern Orthodox family and my grandparents kept kosher, I call myself an unorthodox Jew. I love Jewish culture: the singing in synagogue, the rituals of the holidays, klezmer music, Yiddish theater and literature.
And I love a Jewish wedding. It’s that feeling of a joyous celebration dancing the hora, and the warmth and community, that to me is emblematic of the Jewish community as a whole.
For information, visit theweddingdresser.com.
Anna Lippe is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
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