Hélène Gordon-Lazareff

Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (21 September 1909 – 16 February 1988) was a French journalist of Russian Jewish origin who founded Elle magazine in 1945. She was married to , founder of the newspaper France-Soir

Born in Russia, Hélène Gordon-Lazareff fled to France from the Bolshevik Revolution. She studied ethnography at the Sorbonne. She began her career as a journalist in the 1930s, writing the children's page for France-Soir under the name "Tante Juliette". She later married the owner of the newspaper, Pierre Lazareff in 1938. The couple left Paris for New York after the outbreak of World War II. 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 and. She returned to Paris in 1944 a couple of weeks after the city was liberated. She decided to start her own fashion magazine and used the experience she had after having worked for several American magazines. A year later the first issue of Elle magazine was published in October "on paper so course that it reminded her of French bread". Gordon-Lazareff was the first one to use colour photographs in her magazine. After a year journalist Françoise Giroud was hired to take over as editor-in-chief of the magazine when Gordon-Lazareff became seriously ill. In Profession Journaliste Françoise Giroud describes Gordon-Lazareff as "a brilliant, young woman".

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