Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with leather artisans and costumers Whitaker Malem.The British leather-making duo Patrick Whitaker and Keir Malem having been loving, working, and living together for over 35 years. Its more than likely that you are well acquainted with their work, even if the name Whitaker Malem rings no bel…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with pop artist, painter and sculptor Allen Jones.Allen was born in Southampton in 1937 and grew up in the London suburbs. He studied painting and lithography at Hornsey College of Art between 1955 and 1959, after which he entered the Royal College of Art alongside what was to become the firs…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks author, journalist, activist and founding editor of Ms. Magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin. From Queens, Letty grew up in a conservative Jewish family. At age 20 in 1960, she became the director of publicity for the publishing company Bernard Geis Associates—later rising to vice president. There…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with author, screenwriter and TV producer James Fritzhand.Originally from Brooklyn, James Fritzhand published his first novel in 1971, ‘Son of the Great American Novel.’ He then went on to publish seventeen further novels, across many genres and using several pseudonyms—from showbiz roman a c…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with art director and author Steven Heller.An incredibly creative and prolific individual, Steven is the author, co-author or editor of over 200 books on graphic design, illustration and political art. I interviewed him in the fall, around the publication of “Growing Up Underground: A Memoir …

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with aerobics instructor and actress Bess Motta.Bess Motta was born and raised right outside Los Angeles, and began acting in school plays at a young age. After high school, she went on to star in “The Great American Backstage Musical” on stage in San Francisco and London—arriving back from h…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with artist and illustrator Emanuel Schongut.Manny Schongut has had a long and diverse career as an illustrator. From upstate New York, Schongut studied and taught at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute before becoming a freelance illustrator. During the 1960s, Schongut became known for his distinctiv…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms is back this week with a conversation with former model and artist Pat Runningbear Evans.One of the most memorable models of the late 1960s and 1970s, Pat Evans was born and raised in Harlem. After she shaved her head, her modeling career became highly successful with Pat starring in ad campaigns, e…

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms is back this week with a conversation with art collector, muse, journalist, and editor Joan Agajanian Quinn.Joan Quinn has been a major force in the Los Angeles art scene for 70 years, as a collector, promoter, advocate, and friend to generations of artists. While amassing a large “accumulation” of …

After a little hiatus, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with the president of the Estate of Richard Bernstein, Rory Trifon.Known for his saturated, highly glamorous covers for Interview magazine, Richard Bernstein was born in New York in 1939; he passed away from AIDs-related complications in 2002. Richard created the cover f…

Returning for a new season, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with fashion designer, actress and model Edina Ronay. Born in Budapest to a family of successful restaurateurs, Edina Ronay fled to London with her parents after the war. There her father opened a restaurant and then founded what became a very successful and influen…

Returning for a new season, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with photographer Susan Wood. Susan Wood is a New Yorker born and bred. She started her career in the early 1950s, working in the lab at LIFE magazine before having her first photo published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1955. Over the subsequent decades Susan photographed …

Hugo Vickers is a writer, historian and broadcaster who discovered his interest in history and the royal family while still at school. He is the author of many books about the royal family, the British aristocracy, Cecil Beaton and other related topics. In his twenties he began researching a famed beauty he had seen mentioned in a book as a teenage…

Shirley Lord is a journalist, beauty editor and expert, and novelist, who rose from working-class Cockney lass to one of the most influential people in the beauty industry through grit, good humor, and a passion for journalism. A features editor for a British women’s magazine by age 24, three years later she married the carpet tycoon Cyril Lord. We…

This week on Sighs & Whispers, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with fashion designer, actress, writer and all-around creative Tere Tereba. As a teenager Tereba began designing for Arpeja, the largest LA-based multi-brand fashion company who owned Young Edwardian, Young Innocent and many others. Quickly making a name for hers…

Meryl Meisler is an acclaimed photographer known for her street and documentary work. Meisler began photographing in the mid-70s, focusing on the Jewish community in her hometown on Long Island as well as the nightlife scene in NYC. After becoming an art and photography teacher at a public school in Bushwick, Brooklyn, she continued to shoot the wo…

Carole Bell Ford is an educator, historian and writer. Born to Jewish immigrant parents in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1934, Carole’s choices led her away from the narrow options available to her in Brownsville at the time, eventually leading her to get her master’s and her doctorate, live in Europe, start writing and launch a whole new career. For m…

Penny Arcade is a performance artist and provocateur. “A runaway at thirteen, a reform-school graduate at sixteen, a performer in the legendary New York Play-House of the Ridiculous at seventeen, and an escapee from Andy Warhol’s Factory scene at nineteen, Penny Arcade emerged in the 1980s as a primal force on the New York art scene and an originat…

Charlie Morrow is a sound artist, composer, musician, producer, conceptualist, performer, magazine editor and former jingle writer. He joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss all aspects of his life, work and creative process. A true multi-hat, his creative projects have included chanting and healing works, museum and gallery installations, large-…

Barbara Nessim is an artist, teacher, and creative visionary. She joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss all aspects of her life, work and creative process. From the personal—her childhood in a Jewish neighborhood in the 1940 and 50s, through life as a single woman making her way in New York in the 60s and 70s, a later marriage and her decision n…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with dancer, choreographer and director Martha Clarke—known for transcending dance and theater to make deeply evocative moving spectacles of beauty steeped in history. After studying at Julliard, dancing with Anna Sokolow’s company, having a baby and moving to …

Kirjoittanut Laura McLaws Helms

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with photographer and filmmaker Robert Farber. Rising to prominence as a nude and fashion photographer in the mid-to-late 1970s, Farber is known for his signature soft focus aesthetic which he developed by experimenting with different films, filters and develop…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with makeup artist, hairstylist, interior decorator and gallery owner Rick Gillette. Passionate about beauty and transformation, Rick arrived in NYC in the late 1960s. In great detail, Rick vividly brings to life the many worlds of New York—from downtown hip sa…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with illustrator and doll creator Mel Odom. An acclaimed illustrator known for utterly captivating and totally unique drawings suffused with a beauty and mystery that were unmatched, Mel worked extensively in the 1970s and 1980s for publications like Playboy, T…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with photographer and filmmaker Willie Christie. A wonderfully gossipy conversation, Willie discusses his career from photo assistant to photographer to commercial director to screenwriter to today. Full of interesting stories and memories about his time as a f…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with make-up artist Barbara Daly.Barbara’s long and illustrious career includes working with such photographic greats as Helmut Newton, Barry Lategan and Norman Parkinson, in addition to designing the makeup looks for two of Stanley Kubrick’s films, ‘A Clockwor…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro.Now 96, Tony Vaccaro is a legend in the photography world. Drafted into WWII at age 20, he brought his 35 mm camera with him to the frontlines in Europe—vividly capturing all aspects of an infantryman’s life: the chaos, …

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with acclaimed fashion journalist Marylou Luther. Opening up about her seven decades writing about fashion, Marylou discusses her leap from small-town Nebraska to covering fashion for the Des Moines Register, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times and McCall’s, meet…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with graphic artist David Lance Goines.Incredibly multi-talented, Goines is an artist, calligrapher, typographer, printing entrepreneur, and author, yet he probably best known for the posters he illustrated for local Berkeley businesses, which have been reprodu…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with pop artist Mel Ramos.Sacramento native Mel Ramos was a progenitor of the pop art movement in the early 1960s – alongside his friends and contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, he was one of the first artists to use comic book illustrations in his…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with graphic artist Sandy Dvore.Originally from Chicago, Sandy Dvore left advertising to move to LA to become an actor in the early 1960s. Several years of failure and a chance encounter resulted in him becoming a highly successful graphic artist in the enterta…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with model, actress and yogi Ingrid Boulting.One of the most memorable models of the late 1960s and 1970s, Ingrid Boulting was raised in South Africa and England. Starting as a ballerina she fell into fashion, where she became a favorite of Richard Avedon, Davi…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with fashion designer Anna Sui.Born in Detroit in 1952, from a young age Sui became obsessed with fashion, music and New York. Sui achieved her dream when she moved to NYC to study fashion design at Parsons, but left after two years to work as an assistant desi…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with photographer and filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg.Originally from the Bronx, Jerry became intrigued with photography while working at his family’s fur business after WWII. He started as a photographer’s assistant in the mid 1950s, before striking out on his own …

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with fashion designer Vicky Tiel.Vicky Tiel started designing clothes as a pre-teen before studying fashion at Parsons in New York. Alongside her college friend, Mia Fonssagrives, she moved to Paris at age 20 in 1964, where they quickly became the toast of the …

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with model, Playboy Playmate and journalist Marilyn Cole Lownes. From a small seaside town in England, Marilyn got her break as a Bunny at the Playboy Club in London in 1971 before becoming the January 1972 Playmate of the Month and 1973's Playmate of the Year.…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with legendary television producer Russell Morash and his wife, Marian Morash. Working at WGBH in Boston since 1957, Russell Morash’s programs have been integral to the success of PBS – he produced Julia Child’s ‘The French Chef’ and ‘The Advocates,’ before cre…

This week on LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms meets with legendary fashion designer Norma Kamali. Opening up about her life, work and creative process, Norma is incredibly insightful about the choices and decisions she has made throughout her career in order to maintain her independence in the fashion industry a…

On this first episode of the relaunched LADY’s After Hours, fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms sits down with renowned photographer Duane Michals. An incredibly prolific artist, he has been shooting since 1958 and continues to produce new work across a range of different media. In a sprawling conversation, we discuss his life, career…

Sit in on controversial artist Richard Kern’s AFTER HOURS conversation with Fabiola Alondra and Jane Harmon of Fortnight Institute. In the wake of "Polarized," their current exhibition of Kern's work (which includes his voyeuristic, 1980's drug-bust films and largely unseen collection of Polaroids), we at LADY were keen to know more about the famou…