Pnina Tornai

Pnina Tornai
Born	Pnina Assis (1962-11-25) November 25, 1962 Israel
Occupation	Wedding dress designer, reality television personality
Known for	Appearing on TLC (TV channel)'s Say Yes to the Dress

Pnina Tornai (born November 25, 1962)^[1] is a wedding dress designer and reality television personality from Israel. She has made a name for herself by selling dresses in Kleinfeld Bridal salon on the reality television show Say Yes to the Dress. She wanted to be an actress, but she put that aside when her third husband convinced her to bring her dresses to Kleinfeld Bridal. Tornai's designs were rejected initially, but she returned to Kleinfeld for other pitches. They accepted her new designs, and she has been Kleinfeld's best seller since.^[2] While she has never taken a sewing lesson, her designs are wanted by brides across the world.^[3]

Personal life

Pnina Tornai was born to Shai Tornei and Ruth Tornei^[4] in 1962; she is the oldest of his four daughters. Tornai was given the name Perla at birth, which is her grandmother's name. In Hebrew, Perla translates to Pnina, thus she was called Pnina.^[4] Her father was an Israeli diplomat from Alexandria, Egypt, and her mother was from Tangier, Morocco. As a child, Tornai dreamed of being an actress, but she went to high school instead. Upon graduating high school, she enlisted in Israel's mandatory one-year military service. Once her stint in the military ended, she decided to pursue her acting career by enrolling in acting school in Paris, France.^[2]

Tornai married David Charles Meshulam in 1984. The two had a son.^[5] Tornai had a love for acting, but her first husband convinced her to quit acting school. Later, she married her second husband and divorced him.^[2] She married her third husband, David Levinshtein, in March 2000. Levinshtein attended UCLA, where he received a master's degree in business. Levinshtein was the man who persuaded Tornai to bring her designs to Kleinfeld, when the two were in Los Angeles.^[2]

Tornai's mother died in December 2010.^[4] She now resides in Ramat Hasharon.^[2]

Career

After Tornai's time in Paris, she returned to Israel with her son. Though she had never taken a sewing lesson, she opened a small store in Tel Aviv, with only one seamstress to help.^[3] The two began creating evening and everyday day gowns.^[2] Tornai started making dresses for more than just her clientele in her shop, around 1992, when a woman asked her to make her a wedding dress which mirrored an evening gown that the woman had seen in the shop window. Tornai accepted the challenge, and when the woman married her fiancé, the photo of their wedding made the front page of an Israel newspaper. When other brides saw the picture, they asked her to replicate the dress, which launched her career. Tornai then turned her store into a wedding dress salon.^[2]

In 2005, Tornai first showed her dresses to Kleinfeld; however, they denied her designs because of her use of lace. Tornai did not give up, and instead she redesigned her dresses to match the style of a Kleinfeld's dress and returned a while later.^[6] When she returned, one of her dresses caught the interest of Kleinfeld's eye, and Tornai became one of Kleinfled's wedding dress designers. The bridal shop opened an in-store boutique for Tornai's dresses, after only two years of designing for the store because she was the store's top vendor. This was a privilege that no other designer at Kleinfeld's had received.^[2] Tornai now spends two weeks out of every month in New York City, where she helps clients with creating dresses and holds trunk shows. Although she has hired seamstresses since the start, she still has a say in every dress that is sold. Along with visiting the New York City store, she spends one weekend every two months checking up on her five stores in Athens. She checks over the dresses to make sure that all aspects are correct and she designs every one of her dresses.^[2] Her dresses can now be found in stores in Tel Aviv, Athens, and Kleinfeld in New York City.^[2] Tornai includes her family in her business; her sister, Kochav, is her makeup artist.

Tornai appeared on the Israeli version of the reality television show Big Brother called HaAh HaGadol VIP in 2009.^[7]

Dresses

Tornai creates dresses while she is dreaming, which inspires the fabrics she uses and her designs.^[2] After she completes the designs, her gowns are hand sewn using fabrics directly imported from Europe. Tornai's signature corsets are embellished with Swarovski crystals and precious stones.^[8][9] According to the New York Times, Tornai's dresses are considered "vixenish."^[6] Tornai tries to make dresses that will work for every bride. She has a line of dresses that are specialized for religious Jewish and Muslim brides. She tries to meet the needs of the customer, which can be seen when, in one episode of Say Yes to the Dress, she made a customized red dress for an Indian bride who wanted a traditional Indian dress.^[2]

Tornai's 2008 bridal collection was infused with floral designs on the corsets, silk pantsuits, and spaghetti-strapped dress that had scalloped hemlines. All of these dresses were inspired by the love song La Vie en rose by Édith Piaf.^[9]

Tornai's 2012 collection featured gowns made of silk, satin, lace and were topped with pearls and jewels. Tornai used pearls because she recalled that her late mother and grandmother always wore pearls when they left the house.^[10] After the passing of her mother, a friend helped her through her grief by comparing tears to pearls, thus the idea for that collection emerged. The collection was based on tears of joy, which translates to pearls of joy for a bride on her wedding day.^[4]

Eva Bryan, NASCAR driver Kurt Busch's wife, sported a Pnina Tornai wedding gown at their wedding.^[11] Singer Ashanti wore a Pnina Tornai dress on MTV's TRL.^[12] Real Housewife and actress NeNe Leakes remarried her husband wearing a Pnina Tornai wedding gown.

References

External links

• Official website