Helene Salomon: Anti-semitism, Guatemalan Fabrics, and Vogue Magazine

Helene eventually moves to NYC and discovers the world of high fashion.
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(Tell me, then, what happens after those four years in Philadelphia?)

After my “socialite” life in Philadelphia, I came to grips that this was in fact an anti-Semitic world. All of a sudden Philadelphia started looking small, and I started to resent it.

(Did you ever have any direct experience of anti-Semitism?)

I would go out to parties or events and someone in my group of friends would say something about New York Jews, adding “You know, you’re not like that so don’t consider yourself included,” that sort of thing. At the beginning, I thought, “Oh, how flattering, I’m not like one of them.” But then I realized how insulting it all is. I thought all of Philadelphia was like that, and it may or may not have been true. This atmosphere may have been limited to the upper crust of the main line, they were mostly non-Jewish…they, who looked down on Jewish issues and people. So I started to feel that it was time to go.

(Was that the first time you’d ever heard any anti-Semitism?)

You know, Ruth [Reich] and I compared notes over the years asking each other the same question. “Did you feel any anti-Semitism growing up in Salvador?” She responded, “Oh, not at all!” And I say “Well, I think there was.” I think there was, although it may be that my family was especially alert to the possibility of its existence.

For example, if I didn’t get invited to one of my classmate’s parties, because maybe that person didn’t like me, then my father would say, “Ach! They’re anti-Semites.” Where it may not have been that problem at all. I didn’t really feel it, but there was a consciousness in the house—I think my parents were carrying on their backs the 5,000 years of rejection of the Jewish people, and I think they did transmit that. So I guess I set out to prove that I could participate in the non-Jewish world, but then it started feeling uncomfortable. On top of which, my mother would say, “And that ring? (A ring from my friend Biddle) What does it mean? Who gave it to you?” A friendship ring that I would have gotten from my friend in Philadelphia or whatever.

After four years in Philadelphia, I said I’m moving to New York.” My father was concerned, “What’s going on? He thought this whole thing was crazy. ” There were not too many people in my circle living on their own in apartments. So he said, “All right. You can go to New York. But I expect you to get a job right away. No more fooling around.” I remember being in New York, arriving the first day and saying, “I’ve gotta get a job, gotta get a job, gotta get a job.” And I walked into Conde Nast Publications and I said, “I need a job.” They said there was an opening at Vogue magazine. They had this editor that couldn’t keep anybody working for her so they decided to get somebody from the outside. I said, “I’ll try it.” And that was the beginning of my career at Vogue magazine.

So I became very sophisticated. (laughs)—I was sort of “way out” dressed to the T with the latest fashions Lillian and everybody else kid me about this period. I would arrive in Salvador, she says—I was four years older than all of them, and they would all sit there, these young girls from the Jewish community, to find out what the latest thing was to wear, to see how I was arriving from New York. I thought I was the “cat’s meow”:

(What type of work were you doing?)

I was in the editorial department, in accessories... we would prepare for a photo shoot, get the models together with their clothes and accessories, visit suppliers, stay up all night to make sure you could meeet Diana Vreeland’s latest thought about where fashion was to go. I was about to move into an editor’s position, remember feeling, ‘this is not for me’…The editors at Vogue at the time, all of them were big socialites, you know? They were women who really didn’t need to work and just had to spend a proper time in the workplace. I started feeling unreal. And just at that time, I met this fantastic clothes designer called Giorgio Saint-Angelo, who was very famous. He was an architect, had worked at some point with Picasso, and was the “darling” of Diana Vreeland, He asked me to leave Vogue and to go with him to Europe. To see what we could do there, expand his world, etc. So we went, he and his partner and myself, his business partner and live-in partner. Very chic. We went off to Rome, set up an office in Paris. I worked with him for a while. I was doing the fashion world successfully.

Felt as though I was getting to a career. But I thought “I can’t be a career woman and not have more education under my belt.” Inspired by Giorgio who had an amazing sense of color and textures, I decided I’ll become an architect. As I though of myself as too sophisticated (!) to be anywhere other than New York I applied to Columbia, thinking if Columbia takes me— . I had completed but one year at Penn so I ended up going to Columbia for three years of undergraduate school and the whole of graduate school, spending six years at Columbia.

(So you finished your undergrad there?)

Yes, went to Columbia from ’69 to ’75. I was already thirty-some when I got out of Columbia. It was a great experience.

(Were your parents relieved?)

Well, who knows, it was a bit confusing. My parents were proud that I became an architect. My father, even to his dying day, addressed his letters “Arquitecto Hélène Salomon.”, even years after I had interrupted my career to do fabrics in Guatemala (I guess I also had developed a good color sense with Giorgio). Still, I was unmarried, without a family, so I wasn’t doing my Jewish responsibility and that is always a bit of a conflict in a Jewish home.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.