Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (; born Hélène Gordon, 21 September 1909 – 16 February 1988) was a journalist, born in Russia to a Jewish family and raised in Paris, who founded magazine in 1945.
After working in ethnology, she became an editor at The New York Times and Harper's Bazaar. Subsequently, she formed an influential couple in Paris with her husband, Pierre Lazareff, founder of . Gordon-Lazareff is credited with discovering Brigitte Bardot.
Early life Hélène Gordon-Lazareff was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on 21 September 1909. Her father, Boris Gordon, born in Rostov-on-Don in 1881, married Élisabeth Skomarovski. Boris was a tobacco industry magnate and owner of a paper factory, a printing house, and newspaper. Press historian and biographer Claire Blandin said her father was "a wealthy and cultured businessman". Hélène had a sister, Émilie, who was born in 1903.
The family fled to France to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Her father had transferred the funds to France and abroad and was the first to escape to Italy, accompanied by his mistress. Around the end of 1917, Hélène, Émilie, and their mother Élisabeth left Russia on a luxury train that took them towards the Black Sea, and then they reached Istanbul, Turkey. During the travel, they cut Hélène's long hair to avoid attracting eye contact from the Bolsheviks. She would subsequently always wear short hair. The three then found Boris in Paris.
They settled in Paris in early 1920. Her parents were separated at this point. She was closer to her father, an ambitious man, who had also organised their escape, even though he had found another woman. Blandin said Gordon-Lazareff was a "Spoiled child traumatised by exile, fascinated by power."
Gordon-Lazareff attended Victor-Duruy High School and College in Paris. Blandin commented that she was a "great reader" and "an excellent student".
Subsequently, she studied ethnology at the Sorbonne in Paris. When she was a student of ethnology, Gordon-Lazareff spent time with surrealists such as Philippe Soupault, who dedicated a poem to her.
In the early 1930s, Gordon-Lazareff, a young divorced mother, graduated from the Institute of Ethnology.
Career Gordon-Lazareff began her career as an ethnologist. From January to April 1935, she contributed to the Sahara-Sudan ethnographic expedition led by Marcel Griaule. She mainly investigated totemism and women in Dogon country. She lived for two months with an African tribe. Upon her return, Gordon-Lazareff published her first travelogue in . It was during this period that she met Pierre Lazareff at the home of the explorer Paul-Émile Victor.
Little interested in scientific journals, she turned to mainstream journalism in the 1930s, writing the children's page for under the pseudonym of (Aunt Juliette). She was a journalist at Marie Claire.
After the outbreak of World War II, she left Paris for New York City with her husband [Pierre] Lazareff, director of . Gordon-Lazareff was easily integrated into journalist circles in New York because of her perfect English. She became an editor of the women's page of The New York Times after working for Harper's Bazaar. Her husband worked for Voice of America and the French section of OWI.
She returned to Paris in 1944, a couple of weeks after the Liberation. She began her own fashion magazine and used her experience after working for American media.
A year later, the first issue of magazine was published "on paper so coarse and yellow that it reminded her of French bread". Gordon-Lazareff founded in 1945 in Paris. She had set up the offices two floors above those of , at No. 100 of in Paris. Colour photography and flash were not yet the norm in Post-War France, and the first covers of were thus photographed in Manhattan. She had borrowed French accessories, including 15 "" hats for these covers.
Between 1945 and 1965, she "spotted everything that sparkled". Editorial writer Michèle Fitoussi said she was "more of a journalist who had a lot of flair than a feminist". 's motto was then: "seriousness in frivolity and irony in graveness".
In 1946, Gordon-Lazareff hired journalist Françoise Giroud to be the managing editor of , a position she held until 1953. In her book, , Giroud describes Gordon-Lazareff as "a brilliant, young woman".
In 1949, she met a 15-year-old stranger named Brigitte Bardot on a station platform and simply told her, "Call me". Before her first film, Bardot became 's main model, presenting junior fashion. launched Bardot's career.
In 1958, she collaborated with to create a clothing line under the brand.
In 1966, the director of Neiman Marcus stores presented Gordon-Lazareff with a Fashion Award and stated that she "is the person who has the most influence on what women wear in Europe and the United States".
Pierre Hedrich of described Gordon-Lazareff as a "lively woman, always in a Chanel skirt suit set, seductive and authoritative, who puts her feet on her desk and drinks tea all day long". , a former journalist for , would later explain that "Hélène Lazareff is not a feminist. She can't stand women in pants. She won't understand May 68." The French social movements of May 1968 shook Gordon-Lazareff's authority within the editorial staff.
Gordon-Lazareff was editor-in-chief of until 1972. She left office in September 1972.
At Georges Pompidou's request, the Hachette Group paid Gordon-Lazareff her full salary as chief executive of magazine until her death.
wrote in 1988 that she was "one of the great figures of the French press after the Liberation".
Sunday lunches in Louveciennes
Every Sunday at 1 p.m., Gordon-Lazareff and her husband, Pierre, hosted artists, actors, politicians and writers for lunch at their property, called (The Royal Grid) in Louveciennes, Yvelines.
The twenty seats at the table were considered "prized", and a list of high-profile personalities would come there by helicopter or sedan, including Harry Belafonte, Habib Bourguiba, Marlon Brando, Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich, Johnny Hallyday, Henry Kissinger, Martin Luther King, and Aristotle Onassis. said, "It was very important to be invited to Louveciennes."
Bardot, Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Jacques Delors and Romain Gary were regulars at Sunday lunches at the home of the "influential couple" and "unmissable tandem of All-Paris" that Gordon-Lazareff and her husband formed. François Mitterrand, Jeanne Moreau, Pompidou, Françoise Sagan and Pierre Salinger were also regulars.
was never invited but insisted that the list of guests from the previous Sunday be communicated to him every Monday morning.
Sunday lunches at were a crucial source of information and influence for Gordon-Lazareff and her husband.
Personal life She was nineteen when she married Jean-Paul Raudnitz, a chemical engineer, in 1928. The two did not get along, and Raudnitz could not cope financially with Hélène's lifestyle, and they divorced after three years. She had a daughter, , from this first marriage.
She married [Pierre] Lazareff, founder of , in April 1939 in Paris. When she lived in New York, she had numerous extramarital affairs, which only drove her husband to despair. Nina Lazareff was Pierre's adopted daughter.
Suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Gordon-Lazareff experienced increasing difficulties after the death of her husband in 1972.
Death On 16 February 1988, Gordon-Lazareff died at her property in . She was buried at in Paris.
References
Sources Hélène Gordon at Enfant Terribles, Susan Weiner, published in 2001 at Elle Not So Chichi, Time Magazine U.S. Hélène Gordon at Profession Journaliste, Françoise Giroud Hélène Gordon Lazareff: The Tsarina Who Was Elle, Véronique Vienne