Not every heritage brand gets a second chance at revival, let alone a third. But entrepreneur Audrey Gelman is proving that the power of family legacy stands the test of time.
Gelman, founder of the antique and homewares store The Six Bells, made it her mission to save a historic textile brand with a compelling history—one she felt a personal connection to.
By Ayala Chocron/tabletmag
In 1900, brothers Julius and Moritz Wallach opened a clothing and textile shop in Munich, Germany. Inspired by local folk artisans, their hand-blocked fabric collections appeared on famous stages, in ballrooms, and even on royals. Their delicate, colorful prints spread from Munich’s Oktoberfest to legendary Parisian fashion houses, including Lanvin.
At one point, the textile brand was so popular that Wallach drapes hung in Adolph Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps.
But during the 1930s, the Reich eventually seized and sold the company for half of its net worth. Moritz fled Germany to New York City; he was one of the few survivors of the family. In 1947, Moritz started over in the United States by relaunching his fabric business. After he passed away in 1963, descendants kept the family business alive until 2022.
That seemed, for all intents and purposes, like the end of their story.
Like Wallach, Gelman is no stranger to reinvention. In 2016, she founded The Wing, a successful chain of women’s workspaces across the United States and London.
After pandemic-era controversies led to its closure, she launched The Six Bells, a Brooklyn homewares store and, eventually, a hotel in the Hudson Valley, New York.
The Six Bells
While searching for historic patterns and textiles for the hotel rooms, Gelman stumbled across the Wallachs’ historic textiles and was inspired by their “survivor story of not only a family, but not letting design history die,” she told Tablet. As a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she connected with the family’s story. Her father comes from a long line of cantors who maintained their practice before and during the war. Her grandfather, meanwhile, fought with the Red Army (while upholding his cantorship), and her grandmother went through a displaced-persons camp in Salzburg, Austria.
While organizing her grandmother’s memorabilia and discovering her traditional Austrian costumes, Audrey came to understand her family’s history better. Traveling to Salzburg and Bavaria to see her family tapestry firsthand influenced the Bavarian design of The Six Bells Inn.
After discovering the Wallach Project, Gelman dove down a rabbit hole of the family’s history. She began searching for Wallach family artifacts, stumbling upon receipts and catalogs on eBay. Eventually, Gelman cold-emailed the business through its website. Within a month, the Wallach family had licensed three prints for a homeware and apparel collaboration with the Six Bells.
Audrey is most interested in the dirndl, a traditional Eastern European folk dress that the Wallach House helped popularize in Germany. She’s particularly fascinated by how the company transformed what was a utilitarian garment into a high-fashion style; now she wants to ensure that nothing will “be put on a shelf and forgotten about.”
The Six Bells x Wallach Project collaboration, which features the Wallach House’s most iconic patterns, includes a pinafore dress and houseware items such as curtains, pillows, napkins, place mats, and oven mitts. There are also fun odds and ends, like dog beds, makeup pouches, and fanny packs.
When I recently met Gelman in Hudson Valley, she put on a dirndl-inspired work dress and did a 360-degree twirl. The pockets, she excitedly noted, “can hold anything from credit cards to Advil to your kid’s bottle to some gardening tool.”
While the story being told in the Six Bells and Wallach Project collaboration is not explicitly Gelman’s own, it’s obvious that her grandparents’ memory is guiding it. The collection weaves together the kismet of Gelman and the Wallach Project’s partnership and the craftsmanship of both brands.
The collection will be available online at thesixbells.com beginning June 24.
