FAMILIES IN BUSINESS
A Round of Applause
It’s been 40 years since the iconic Homewood dancewear store opened its doors. Here, a chat with owner Katie Wade Fraught is a walk down memory lane with her eyes on the future.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF APPLAUSE DANCEWEAR
Cindy and Buddy Wade, the original owners and Katie’s parents, at the grand reopening in fall 1991
BY STEPHANIE GIBSON LEPORE The Wade family is made up of dancers and dance teachers. And years ago, when patriarch Buddy Wade tired of paying the inflated prices for dancewear at conventions, he decided to open a place of his own, and Applause Dancewear was born. Today, daughter Katie Wade Fraught has taken over the business, but it was her parents’ foresight that got them rolling. “They saw the need for a dancewear store in the city of Birmingham that could supply an ever-growing dance market with the need for everything a dancer would not only want, but also be expected to have,” she explains. A Samford graduate, Buddy started out as a pharmacist, but missed being around people, so he quit his job and sold cars to make ends meet while he figured out his next step. He opened a State Farm office on Palisades, then added Applause to his business portfolio. Katie’s mom, Cindy, graduated from LSU and became director, creator, and choreographer of The Star Spangled 22 Bham Family October 2021
Girls, a precision dance team that is a part of the Homewood Patriot Marching Band. After receiving her master’s degree from The University of Alabama, she added dance as a PE elective in the State of Alabama, which allowed students to choose it over a typical high school PE class. “I sold my first leotard at Applause when I was 7 years old and then continued to work there every afternoon in middle school, walking down from HMS to the store, and then I would go to dance class at night,” says Katie, who danced from age two-and-a-half all the way through college, was a Star Spangled Girl from tenth through twelfth grades, and will—given the chance—still dance today. “I worked through high school when I wasn’t busy with Spangle and Show Choir. I went to The University of Alabama for a year-and-a-half to study marketing, before returning to UAB. When I was 19, my parents lost their long-time manager at the store and asked me if I would be interested CONTINUED ON PAGE 23
