A few mornings ago, Richelle Dynae Rudeen was busy cutting fabric for a “snowflake fairy” dress for a 14-year-old.
She flipped a piece of elastic behind her back, hiked it up under her arms, gave it a bit of a stretch and snipped it off.
“In the past, we haven’t done much clothing for girls over 10, but someone found us and sent a lovely note, asking if we could do this one for her daughter,” Rudeen said.
“Her measurements are almost exactly the same as mine, so this is easy.”
Rudeen, 25, has a budding business creating high-end costume dresses in dozens of permutations of fairy, princess and ballerina styles.
Then there are the accoutrements — wands, wings, tiaras, even brooms for Halloween witch princesses and veils for exotic royalty of the Far East.
Her children’s creations, sold under the brand Ella Dynae Designs, “are all custom, made to measure,” said Rudeen, who spent her childhood dancing and took her love of ballet tutus and dressing up along with her to college at the Fashion Institute of Technology, or FIT, in New York City.
Up to that point, fashion design hadn’t really occurred to her as a career.
“It was my mom’s idea,” she said. “I had always assumed I would be a professional dancer — that was my childhood dream — but when I was about 16, I had a very hard year.”
First, her father, Rob Rudeen, was diagnosed with cancer that put him in the hospital for surgery immediately, “and that was a huge emotional toll for me,” she recalled.
“About the same time, I had a lot of dance-related injuries. All of a sudden, my whole life seemed up in the air. It was a good reality check — I knew I had to have a Plan B.”
Her mother, Pam Rudeen, who home-schooled Richelle and her twin sister, Larissa, and their younger brother, Torin, had always encouraged their creative sides.
“She reminded me that I had always loved clothing and fashion and dressing up and maybe there was something there I could do,” Rudeen said.
“I thought maybe I could, but the most sewing I had ever done was to put ribbons on my pointe shoes, by hand.”
She attended Sheldon High School for her senior year and also started sewing lessons while she checked out college programs and zeroed in on FIT.
“For the application there, you had to make an entire wardrobe collection,” Rudeen said.
“I had a month or two to learn to sew and do the whole thing. I knew so little, I spent the first two hours sewing backward on the machine.”
But she made the clothes, then flew to New York to present her work in a face-to-face interview.
“The two people who interviewed me were tailoring professors — exactly what I knew least about — and when they looked at the coat that I made, the first thing they did was turn it inside out,” Rudeen recalled.
“They looked puzzled, talked to each other and muttered a lot. They said it was ‘interesting,’ but I needed some experience sewing.”
An additional requirement was to make something based on “an object,” she said.
“I chose a lollipop and made a fantastic little skirt with tons of layers of bright color — it was based much more on the tutus and dance clothes I was used to.”
She got in, but the adjustment to the fashion institute was huge.
“From the first day, I had eight or nine classes a week, in which we would be shown how to do something, like a certain collar and bodice, and we had to bring a finished garment of that type with us to the next class,” she said.
“I was really at a big disadvantage — almost everyone else had a lot of experience with sewing — so it was a huge challenge to catch up.”
However, one particular class at FIT, historical corsetry, grabbed her imagination and set her course for the next several years.
“I fell in love with historical design, both men’s and women’s,” Rudeen said.
So, after finishing at FIT, she enrolled in historical costuming at the Arts University at Bournemouth, England.
The approach to design there was exactly the opposite of FIT, so she had another period of adjustment.
“In England, you had a few lectures and then they told you to make something, like an 18th century gown,” she said. “I was waiting to be shown how to make panniers, and it never happened — they expected you to just go to the library or look at paintings and figure out how to do it yourself.”
It was good, though, she said, “because it taught me how to imagine something in my head and work out how to do it.”
Still fascinated by the corsetry theme, Rudeen entered one of her creations in the World of Wearable Arts awards, better known as WOW, in New Zealand, and won both the avant garde and people’s choice awards for a circus-themed creation called The Ring Mistress.
Its skirt back evoked the Big Top, with the front partially revealing mesh cages holding stuffed circus animals.
Rudeen’s design is part of the WOW museum’s permanent collection in Wellington, New Zealand.
Her adult designs are promoted under the name Richelle Dynae.
But it was freelancing in London that helped Rudeen find her fashion calling.
“One of my clients there did really high-end children’s parties, where the little girls would get their hair and makeup done and get to wear designer gowns that she provided for them,” she said.
“I did several ball gowns for her children’s parties, and I had so much fun — it was the first time I had done anything for children, and I fell in love with it.”
It dovetailed neatly with her memories of dancing costumes, and the way little girls feel when they dress up.
“They want to feel gorgeous, so when they dress in something beautiful and look in the mirror, they see themselves as gorgeous,” Rudeen said.
“Adults look at themselves in the mirror very differently, much more critically.”
She had found her niche, and she decided to pursue it in her home town, where her parents invested in her new company, with her mom as partner.
She took nearly a year to develop the first Ella Dynae designs, all based on the tutus and leotards that she wore and loved as a child.
“We use a lot of tulle and stretch velvet, lots of organza and satin and stretch lace,” Rudeen said.
“Everything is very soft and stretchy, comfy and durable. We want these things to be kind of like an investment, passed down from sibling to sibling, like an heirloom.”
Accordingly, they’re not cheap. The complete costumes range from about $150 to $250.
Rudeen used children as mini focus groups to perfect the clothing as she went along.
“When they came in, started looking at piles of costumes and gasping with excitement to try them on — and then not wanting to take them off — we knew we had gotten it right.”
When she started marketing her creations, there were just five choices — “Two fairies, two princesses and one genie” — and business grew slowly, mostly via word of mouth and Facebook.
Now, a little over a year later, she can hardly keep up with orders.
“I just got the last of the Halloween orders out, and now we’re starting on Christmas,” Rudeen said.
“It’s at the point now where I have to hire people to sew — I simply can’t do it all myself.”
In 2014, the Ella Dynae line will expand to include flower girl and first communion dresses, “and I also would like to add a line of party products for girls as well as some boys’ clothing,” she said.
Despite the excitement of years in the high-fashion world in New York and London, Rudeen is content to bring her career back to Eugene.
“It’s wonderful to be doing this here, in the place where I grew up,” she said.
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