“I think Jill Andrews’ studio is on fire,” a co-worker called to tell me Monday afternoon.
My whole body went numb. I quickly opened the link she sent and watched in real time as a three-alarm fire engulfed the beautiful Victorian building—a former police station built in 1899, lovingly referred to as “The Castle”—on the corner of Keswick Road and West 34th Street in Hampden.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported. Though the structure remains, the building sustained a collapsed roof and severe water and burn damage. As the firefighters worked to contain the blaze, I thought about all of the studios and small businesses—a mental health practice, an insurance firm, pregnancy and parenthood haven The Womb Room, among others—who call that corner property home, but especially Jill.
As the editor of Baltimore Weddings, I’ve known Jill for at least 15 years. Ours started as a professional relationship, but as anyone—clients, wedding vendors, random people in her building—will tell you, with Jill, friendship blossoms quickly.
Jill is a rare gem these days—a dressmaker who has been crafting custom gowns from her corner in Hampden for 16 years. After graduating from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and living in London for a period, she moved to Baltimore and spent 14 years making costumes for Center Stage before opening her own business in 2009. She loves everything about her profession—the history (she knows everything about everything), the machinery, the textiles, the stories, the lineage of a piece of vintage fabric.
Even more impressive, she’s a party of one. She works closely with all of her brides, sourcing the fabrics, designing, altering, facilitating fittings, and, most importantly, celebrating when they walk down the aisle. Almost every time I’m at Jill’s studio, she pulls out her phone to show me her most recent brides—like a proud mom.
Jill has whipped up custom dresses for almost every single photo shoot I’ve helmed as editor of Baltimore Weddings—all always perfectly on theme. One year she even created a cover dress for us made up of 20 years of Baltimore Bride (as we were called then) magazines. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen—the delicate workmanship of a two-piece top and ball skirt completely made of paper. (The bustier portion is still in her studio, and somehow still intact after Monday’s fire.)
Beyond wedding looks, she’s also created custom ‘fits for First Lady Dawn Moore, 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell, and Hana Scott, the first lady of Baltimore. When it came time for my daughter, Willa, to pick a look for her Bat Mitzvah, Jill perfectly altered a Betsy Johnson dress and made the most gorgeous red lace jacket for her to pair with it. The three of us dreaming up the outfit together is etched into my mind as being as joyous as the actual celebration.
And it all happened within the walls of her magical space. It was closest Baltimore will ever come to a Paris atelier—with tins of bespoke buttons, luxurious fabrics, silk threads, and vintage linen-covered Wolf dress forms. Her workroom was a dreamy place drenched in natural light with hardwood floors, and a row of sewing machines. Her worktable was always littered with muslin, seam rippers, and handmade fabric flowers from the century-old M&S Schmalberg in New York City. (See, here.) Racks of gowns were safely zippered into her signature pink dress bags and tagged with the client’s name and wedding date.
She even got married there. The fireplace in the back room served as the backdrop for exchanging vows with her husband Robert Jones (she affectionately calls him “Mr Jones.”) in Nov. 2023, with her two kids flanking her.
Though her studio eventually felt like home, it took her years to renovate and execute the vision she wanted. As she told me when I interviewed her in 2019, fittingly for a piece we call “Maker Space,” when she first moved in, it wasn’t love at first sight.
“The fireplace looked like [pink] Spam. Everything was green. There were big hideous lights. I cried,” recalled Andrews of the first time she walked around the first-floor location.
In that same piece, I called her space “the atelier version of an open kitchen,” as nothing was tucked away or hidden from clients, so that they could connect the dots of the whole dressmaking process.
“The sewing machines provide a pleasant buzz, but there’s something else reverberating off the walls. It’s the hum of excitement as brides come in for their fittings, their names etched on a giant chalkboard next to their appointment time,” I reported. “During the weeks and months needed to create a dress, the brides, moms, aunts, and grandmas become Andrews’ family.”
When I was last there in mid-October, she was excited that a bulk of her 2025 dresses were now in her brides’ hands, and just a few remained before the end of the year.
On Monday night, I felt like I had to go see the damage with my own eyes. This time I parked across from Rocket to Venus and walked down 34th Street towards the building. Keswick was still blocked with a fire engine parked out front. I was just going to stand at a distance, pay my respects, and leave, when I heard someone call my name. It was Jill.
She was soaking wet from her foray into the building, as water rained down into her studio. Her car was full of everything they managed to let her grab. I hugged her. Words escaping me other than, “I’m so sorry.”
Suffice it to say, her studio—described beautifully in the GoFundMe created by a former client—is irreplaceable. But as Jill herself wrote yesterday on an Instagram post, “I will figure it out. I’ll start over. I always say to myself, don’t worry, beauty is boundless, I’ll just make more.”
When I posted about the fire on Baltimore Weddings’ Instagram Tuesday morning, the local wedding community rallied with messages of support, offers from local bridal shops to assist any of her upcoming brides, and even locals willing to loan their own wedding dresses to Jill’s clients. (She has three getting married this weekend.)
Just last month, I was at a wedding vendor event and walked up to Jill. “Help,” I said pointing to the tie-neck collar on my shirt. Within seconds, she deftly re-tied the bow, so it laid perfectly.
“You always make everything better,” I told her. Now it feels like our chance to do the same for her.
In 24 hours since launching, the crowd-funding campaign set up for Jill Andrews Gowns raised more than $22,000 of its $75,000 goal. If you’re interested in supporting, you can find the GoFundMe, here.
