Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (French: [elɛn gɔʁdɔ̃ lazaʁɛf]; born Hélène Gordon,[1] 21 September 1909 – 16 February 1988) was a French journalist of Russian and Jewish origin who founded Elle magazine in 1945. She was married to Pierre Lazareff, founder of the newspaper France-Soir.

Early life

Hélène Gordon-Lazareff was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on 21 September 1909.[2][3] Her father, Boris Gordon, born in Rostov-on-Don in 1881, married Élisabeth Skomarovski.[2] Boris was a tobacco industry magnate and owner of a paper factory, a printing house, and Préazosvki Kraï Novosti newspaper.[2][3] Hélène had a sister, Émilie, who was born in 1903.[2]

The family fled to France to escape the Bolshevik Revolution.[3] Her father had transferred the funds to France and abroad and was the first to escape to Italy, accompanied by his mistress.[2] Around the end of 1917, Hélène, Émilie, and their mother Élisabeth left Russia on a luxury train that took them towards the Black Sea,[2] and then they reached Istanbul, Turkey.[2][3] During the travel, they cut Hélène's long hair to avoid attracting eye contact from the Bolsheviks. She would subsequently always wear short hair.[2] The three then found Boris in Paris.[2]

They settled in Paris in early 1920.[1][2] She was closer to her father, an ambitious man, who had also organised their escape, even though he had found another woman.[2]

Gordon-Lazareff attended Victor-Duruy High School and College in Paris.[4]

Subsequently, she studied ethnology at the Sorbonne in Paris.[2] When she was a student of ethnology, Gordon-Lazareff spent time with surrealists such as Philippe Soupault, who dedicated a poem to her.[3]

In the early 1930s, Gordon-Lazareff, a young divorced mother,[2] graduated from the Institute of Ethnology.[5]

Career

Gordon-Lazareff began her career as an ethnologist.[2][5] She participated in the 1935 Sahara-Sudan ethnographic expedition, which Marcel Griaule led. She mainly investigated totemism and women in Dogon country.[5][6] Upon her return, Gordon-Lazareff published her first travelogue in L'Intransigeant.[3] It was during this period that she met Pierre Lazareff at the home of the explorer Paul-Émile Victor.[3]

Little interested in scientific journals, she turned to mainstream journalism in the 1930s,[2][5] writing the children's page for Paris-soir under the pseudonym of Tante Juliette (Aunt Juliette).[7][8] She was a journalist at Marie Claire.[7][9]

After the outbreak of World War II, she left Paris for New York City with her husband [Pierre] Lazareff, director of Paris-soir.[4] Gordon-Lazareff was easily integrated into journalist circles in New York because of her perfect English.[10][8] She became an editor of the women's page of The New York Times after working for Harper's Bazaar.[3][10][11] Her husband worked for Voice of America.[4]

She returned to Paris in 1944, a couple of weeks after the Liberation.[4] She began her own fashion magazine and used her experience after working for American media. A year later, the first issue of Elle magazine was published "on paper so coarse and yellow that it reminded her of French bread".[11] Gordon-Lazareff founded Elle in 1945 in Paris.[3][12] Elle's motto was then: "seriousness in frivolity and irony in seriousness".[10]

Between 1945 and 1965, she "spotted everything that glittered".[10]

In 1946, Gordon-Lazareff hired journalist Françoise Giroud to be the managing editor of Elle, a position she held until 1953.[13] In her book, Profession Journaliste, Giroud describes Gordon-Lazareff as "a brilliant, young woman".[14]

Around 1948, 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 Elle's main model who presented junior fashion.[10]

Pierre Hedrich of L'Obs 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".[10] Alix Girod de l'Ain, a former journalist for Elle, would later explain that "Hélène Lazareff is not a feminist. She can't stand women in pants. She won't understand May 68."[10]

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".[10]

Gordon-Lazareff was editor-in-chief of Elle until 1972.[7][15] She left office in September 1972.[9][16]

Le Monde wrote in 1988 that she was "one of the great figures of the French press after the Liberation".[3]

Personal life

She married [Pierre] Lazareff, founder of France-Soir, in April 1939 in Paris.[4] She had a daughter, Michèle Rosier, from her first marriage.[17] Nina Lazareff was Pierre's adopted daughter.[18]

Every Sunday at 1 p.m., Gordon-Lazareff and her husband hosted artists, actors, politicians and writers for lunch at their house in Louveciennes.[10] 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. Juliette Gréco said, "It was very important to be invited to Louveciennes."[10]

Suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Gordon-Lazareff experienced increasing difficulties after the death of her husband in 1972.[1]

Death

On 16 February 1988, Gordon-Lazareff died at her property in Le Lavandou and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Bloch-Lainé, Virginie (16 August 2023). "Une biographie d'Hélène Gordon-Lazareff: diva de la presse" [A biography of Hélène Gordon-Lazareff: press diva]. Libération (in French). Archived from the original on 16 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Blandin, Claire (2023). Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (in French). Paris: Fayard. pp. 1918, 1920–1924. ISBN 978-2-2137-2328-0.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "La disparition d'Hélène Gordon-Lazareff La 'tsarine' de la presse féminine" [The disappearance of Hélène Gordon-Lazareff The 'tsarina' of the women's press]. Le Monde (in French). 18 February 1988. Archived from the original on 16 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Ory, Pacal; Blanc-Chaléard, Marie-Claude (2013). Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France [Dictionary of foreigners who made France] (in French). Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont. p. 614. ISBN 978-2-2211-4016-1.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Hélène Gordon". National Library of France (in French). n.d. Archived from the original on 29 December 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
  6. ↑ "Sahara-Soudan (1935)". National Library of France (in French). n.d. Archived from the original on 29 December 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 Thérenty, Marie-Eve (2019). Femmes de presse, femmes de lettres − De Delphine de Girardin à Florence Aubenas [Women of the press, women of letters − From Delphine de Girardin to Florence Aubenas] (in French). Paris: CNRS editions. p. 264. ISBN 978-2-2711-2913-0.
  8. 1 2 Weiner, Susan (2001-05-09). Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945-1968. ISBN 9780801865398.
  9. 1 2 Feyel, Gilles (2023). La presse en France des origines à nos jours. Histoire politique et matérielle [The press in France from its origins to the present day. Political and material history] (in French) (3 ed.). Paris: Editions Ellipses. ISBN 978-2-3400-8290-8. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Hedrich, Pierre (12 July 2016). "'Elle': Et Hélène Lazareff inventa le mag féminin nouvelle génération" ['Elle': And Hélène Lazareff invented the new generation women's magazine]. L'Obs (in French). Archived from the original on 13 January 2024. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  11. 1 2 "Magazines: Si Elle Lit Elle Lit Elle". Time. 22 May 1964. Archived from the original on 16 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
  12. ↑ "Defending Fashion". Forbes. 31 May 2007. Archived from the original on 28 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
  13. ↑ Ivry, Benjamin (27 January 2003). "French journalist leaves her mark". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on 31 December 2023. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  14. ↑ "Magazine history: And Lazareff created French Elle". It's OK for intellectual feminists to like fashion.
  15. ↑ "Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek" [Catalog of the German National Library]. German National Library (in German). n.d. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  16. ↑ "Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (1909-1988)". National Library of France (in French). n.d. Archived from the original on 14 January 2024. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  17. ↑ Couston, Jérémie (4 May 2016). "Michèle Rosier, l'inconnue du cinéma français" [Michèle Rosier, the stranger of French cinema]. Télérama (in French). French Cinematheque. Archived from the original on 14 January 2024. Retrieved 14 January 2024. [Born in Paris in 1930, Michèle was 9 years old when her mother, the journalist Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, recently divorced from the father of her child, remarried Pierre Lazareff.]
  18. ↑ Williams, Yseult [in French] (2015). Impératrices de la mode [Empresses of fashion] (in French). Paris: La Martinière Groupe. p. 104. ISBN 978-2-7324-7237-9.

Sources

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