About Fredda

For Fredda, a director, speaker, philosopher and visionary, true style never stops at the surface. “Whether we’re talking about designing an image for photography, a life, an individual or a business style,” she says, “we’re really talking about the same thing. Style, energy and power.”

Whether she is directing photography, video or business identity, delivering a speech or leading a seminar, Fredda has the same philosophy. Her work reflects a unique visual style combined with painstaking attention to detail. But she never loses sight of the project's larger goals, which brings focus and clarity to her work.

Early in her career, she toured the United States and Canada with Dwight Miller, the former European artistic director for Vidal Sassoon, as a platform artist for beauty and fashion shows.

It was there that she started to develop the stage presence that is now her trademark as an empowering speaker on issues of personal, life and business style. She also calls it “the real beginning of my visual education.”

As the image consulting field was forming, Fredda worked with one of its pioneers, the late Paul Glick. With him, she learned how to produce and direct shows and seminars on personal style, image and presentation.

Her work as an image consultant moved into life coaching that eventually led to her empowering, interactive seminar series: The Challenge of Authenticity™. “This was where I really refined the concept of using outward appearance as the key to inner being,” she says.

Building on her photo set experience with Miller, Fredda worked with many photographers for advertising clients including Marshall Field, The Limited, Alberto Culver and Helene Curtis.

She then worked with world renowned fashion photographer Paul Gremmler on clients such as Jockey, Sears, Playboy and Montgomery Ward, and later became his creative partner. With Gremmler, she worked with creative directors, stylists, makeup artists, art directors and crews from Chicago, New York, Paris and Britain.

Working with world famous theatrical producer and entrepreneur Michael Butler, she and Gremmler were involved in photographing the international polo scene and celebrities such as H.R.H. Prince Charles, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Frank Zappa and David Bowie.

She opened her first salon in Gremmler’s Chicago studio, working with a wide variety of clients including anchor Ron Majors, reporters and producers at NBC Chicago.

“My background has always enabled me to merge the artistic and the practical,” she says. “I am the daughter of an artist mother and a lawyer father. But before my father were seven unbroken generations of Orthodox rabbis, which may be one reason I see my work as a calling.”

Her studio is a source of empowerment and training, where she consults and offers internships to students from The School of The Art Institute, and Columbia College. She is writing a book, “The Challenge of Authenticity™,” on her philosophy of style, energy and personal power.

Based in Chicago, Available Everywhere.