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Photo by Jon Anderson
Fashion and interior designer Heidi Elnora speaks with guests at the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Vestavia Hills Methodist Church on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Fashion and interior designer Heidi Elnora poses for a photo with Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Michelle Hawkins and chamber Chairman Taylor Burton at the chamber luncheon at Vestavia Hills Methodist Church on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Fashion and interior designer Heidi Elnora speaks at the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Vestavia Hills Methodist Church on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
Fashion and interior designer Heidi Elnora speaks with guests at the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Vestavia Hills Methodist Church on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026.
The venue for the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce’s February luncheon — Vestavia Hills Methodist Church — was different than usual this week with renovations underway at the Vestavia Country Club, but there was a different vibe with the speaker, too.
Heidi Elnora, an Alabama-based fashion and interior designer known for making waves in the bridal gown industry and her participation in the “Project Runway,” and “Bride By Design” reality TV shows, brought a dose of “pep” to the room as the guest speaker.
The high-energy Elnora shared the story of how she rose to prominence in her industry but, at God’s prompting, shifted gears in the last couple of years and is headed in a new direction.
Elnora, who has a book coming out this fall, in August 2024 announced she was getting out of the wedding gown industry after more than two decades and in June of last year sold her Heidi Elnora Atelier bridal boutique on Birmingham’s Morris Avenue.
It wasn’t an easy decision, she said. People from all over the world were flying to Birmingham to buy wedding dresses from her, she was making lots of money (her last dress sold for $25,000) and she had built a brand that had gained national media attention.
But “God told me it was time to pivot,” Elnora said. “God put something else on my heart.”
This year, she has launched a new “lifestyle brand” called Pep Gally, merging fashion, art and home décor. It includes athleisure wear that looks like fashionable sweatshirts, but that’s only a small piece of the puzzle, Elnora said.
Behind the scenes, she has patents pending for something else she calls “the big show, the grand finale, the true icing on the cake.”
“No one knows what I’m doing — just me and God, just the two of us,” she said.
Her bridal collections were carried in more than 30 stores worldwide, including all 18 Nordstrom wedding suites and Bergdorf Goodman, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, British Vogue, Martha Stewart Weddings and Town & Country Weddings.
But she lost hundreds of millions of dollars by failing to patent her original concept of bridal toppers and customizable add-ons that debuted on The Today Show in 2015, she said. She’s being smarter this time and keeping things under wraps until her patents are approved, she said.
In the meantime, she’s busy promoting her book, “Live With Spirit,” which she said is designed to help people find joy in everyday life and share it with others and help encourage people with spiritual nuggets. It will be the first in a series of books, she said.
Elnora also this past weekend started a Pep Gally Academy, which essentially is a school that teaches people how to sew. She bought a 2,600-square-foot warehouse in Morris, put sewing machines in it and launched the academy with six students and a waiting list of 70 more people wanting to join, she said.
She’s building the curriculum as she goes, but she wanted to go ahead and launch it because she’s passionate about a big problem in the United States’ garment and textle industry, she said.
“We’ve lost so many garment mills and textile mills in North Carolina and Alabama,” she said. “Everything’s going overseas.”
Plus, fabric suppliers are fading away, too. Hancock Fabrics closed its remaining brick-and-mortar stores in 2015 after filing for bankruptcy, and JoAnn Fabric and Craft Stores closed its 800+ stores last year.
“It’s slowly slipping,” Elnora said. “What happens when they stop shipping clothes [from overseas]? … There’s a need out there.”
Not a lot of people know how to sew, and only 11 states offer home economic courses, Elnora said. “I want there to be more of an opportunity for people to actually learn how to sew.”
She would love to get that skill intwined with two-year colleges and vocational schools, she said. Elnora went to Washington, D.C., in November to speak to officials about her concerns about the garment and textile industries.
She has spent all these years learning about the industry and making connections, and all of that may have just been practice for her to now step into the game, make a difference and leave a legacy, she said.
While she was making a name for herself in the bridal gown industry, behind the scenes she was personally struggling, she said.
“Inside I was broken. I didn’t realize how much work needed to be done on me,” she said.
She bought a beach house in 2023 and has used it as a safe haven and give time for her spirit to heal, she said. She spent a lot of time in prayer the past 17 months, letting God give her direction, she said.
God has always been there for her throughout her life, she said.
Born in 1980, she grew up in Morris in a family that was on food stamps, she said. Her dad worked on a farm, and her mom worked for the Red Cross, and they divorced when she was 3, she said. She was raised by her mother and grandmother, and life was lean, she said. She was determined she would make it out of the hayfield, she said.
“I knew at a very young age I wanted to be a fashion designer. How I was going to get there — I didn’t have a clue,” she said. “I just loved fashion, and I was told it wasn’t a job.”
When she was 16, her grandmother bought her a croquis to sketch dresses, and in 1997, she got her first sewing machine. She didn’t have wealthy parents to fly her to Paris to get into the fashion industry, so she got into Central Alabama Community College on a softball scholarship. Her coach there helped her land a spot on the softball team at the Savannah College of Art & Design, where she earned a presidential scholarship that covered most of her expenses.
“God took care of me,” Elnora said.
In Savannah, she found her “tribe” among the “super-artsy” people, though she brought her own small-town Alabama accent and former cheerleader spirit to the table. She was among four seniors chosen to display her work in a gallery by someone affiliated with Coco Chanel. She later got a job designing kids’ clothes at Carter’s in Atlanta and, at the age of 21, was successful with a pitch to get Carter’s apparel in Target stores, she said.
A friend fom Chicago encouraged her to try out for the “Project Runway” TV show, and she was the first person selected for season two at an audition in Miami in 2005. That came with interviews with Elle magazine and The Today Show, she said.
She got hit by a drunk driver, which changed the course of her career and brought her back to Alabama (along with a “boy from Shades Valley High School” whom she later married).
After two weeks working in his family’s roofing business, she decided to start making wedding dresses.
In 2008, she started her “Build a Bride” concept that involves simple silhouettes that work for all body types and add-ons, and people loved it, she said. In 2011, she had dresses in 10 stores and was at New York Fashion Week when she met a woman Nordstrom, who picked her to provide four dresses in each of Nordstrom’s 18 stores.
“That lady didn’t accidentally walk into my space. God had that planned for me,” Elnora said.
She then was picked to have her own reality TV show called “Bride By Design” on TLC. With that came a global audience. She’s particularly popular in Brazil and India, she said.
One of her last goals was to be in the Burgdorf Goodman store, and she was picked up by them in 2021. She thought she had done everything she wanted to do, but God has since directed her in this new direction, and “this story is just beginning,” she said.
