Hélène Lazareff, born Gordon in Rostov-on-Don, arrived in Paris as a child with a family fleeing the Russian revolution. A refugee in New York during the war, she worked for Harper's Bazaar and brought back an American way of making a magazine: large photographs, useful subjects, a tone that goes straight to the point. The first Elle came out in November 1945; its circulation would reach a million.
The story
Hélène Gordon was born on 21 September 1909 in Rostov-on-Don. Her family, Russian Jewish bourgeoisie, fled the October revolution, passed through Turkey and settled in Paris. She studied at the Sorbonne, then came into journalism through the children's pages.
Remarried in 1939 to the journalist Pierre Lazareff, she had to take refuge in New York during the war. There she worked for Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times, and brought back an American idea of the magazine: the full-page photograph, the practical subject, the direct tone.
The first issue of Elle appeared on 21 November 1945, founded with Marcelle Auclair: seven hundred thousand copies, sold out. The magazine brought fashion down into the street, backed the return of Coco Chanel in 1954, and counted two million readers in the 1960s.
Struck by Alzheimer's disease from the 1970s, she died at Le Lavandou on 16 February 1988 and joined Pierre Lazareff, dead since 1972, in the grave in Division 7.
On site, do not miss
The stele with two names, in a sector where the vaults of the nineteenth century crowd the paths: nothing there signals the magazine.
Visitors' questions
Where is Hélène Lazareff's grave?
Division 7, in an old wooded quarter at the bottom of the cemetery, five minutes from the boulevard de Ménilmontant gate. The stone carries both names: Pierre Lazareff, 1907-1972, and Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, 1909-1988.
Pierre Lazareff, Division 7Who was Pierre Lazareff, buried with her?
Her husband, married in 1939: the man who ran France-Soir, which he launched at the Liberation, and the producer of the television programme Cinq colonnes à la une. In April 2006, journalists from France-Soir on strike came to lay white roses on this grave.
The writers and poetsWhat did Hélène Lazareff change in the French press?
She imported the American magazine: the full-page photograph, the practical feature, the direct tone. From 1945 Hélène Lazareff addressed a working, independent woman reader — a bet that would win Elle two million readers twenty years later.
The famous women of Père-LachaiseHow long did she run Elle?
Twenty-seven years, from its founding in 1945 until 1972, the year Pierre Lazareff died. Hélène Lazareff gave up the editorship of the magazine she had created, and died sixteen years later, on 16 February 1988, at seventy-eight.
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