Born in Leipzig, Germany in 1908, Helene Rother was in Paris at the outbreak of World War II, having made a name for herself in a career within the Paris high fashion market, designing fine jewelry, watches, and hat pins... she made her way out of France just as the Nazis begin their invasion.
She boarded the first outbound ship she was able to get a ticket on and found herself in Casablanca with her seven-year-old daughter, Ina, in tow.
Finally, she ended up in New York in 1941, safely away from the war in Europe and North Africa.
Here she put her artistic skills once more to good use, landing a job as an illustrator for Timely Publications (later, and certainly better known, as Marvel) drawing an early Marvel character by the name of “Jimmy Jupiter”.
Purely coincidence that yesterday I learned that Stan Lee started working there in 1939 as a gofer.
In 1942, she spotted an advertisement General Motors had placed in The New York Times for an interior designer.
It's quite astonishing that she went from drawing comics, to working at GM as an automotive designers, if you can imagine doing that... and going to interview with GM. That's a big leap!
She applied for, and got, the GM job working for Harley Earl. With her daughter in tow, she moved to Detroit, found an apartment, and began designing interior trim for GM cars.
It was reported by The Detroit News that she was collecting an unheard-of $600 per month (roughly $8,500 in today’s money). GM was quick to downplay the report due to the progressive idea of having a woman not only working in a male-centric field, but also making more than the average man at the same job ($200). After four years with the company, she had stockpiled enough capital and name recognition to step out and start a business.
In 1947 she opened her own studio in the Fisher building on the 16th floor, and formed a successful partnership with Nash Motors, where she specialized in designs for automotive interiors, furniture, mosaics and stained glass windows.
Even the economical Nash Rambler models were prominently promoted as "irresistible glamour" on wheels. The innovative 100-inch wheelbase Rambler was conceived initially as a well-appointed convertible with its interior designed with the aid of Rother as a consultant.
https://www.chuckstoyland.com/category/automotive/nash-rambler/nash/nash-1951/1951-nash-the-new-nash-airflytes-sales-catalog/
Nash used a strategy to focus on design and quality features helped establish a new segment in the automobile market, as the Rambler is widely acknowledged to be the first successful modern American compact car.
Many Nash sales brochures and Rambler advertisements of the time featured the copy stating: "Styling by Pinin Farina and interiors by Madame Helene Rother of Paris" as proof of the European influence on company's automobile styling. She conferred with Pinin Farina, who styled the exterior of the 1953 Nash Airflytes, to coordinate with the interiors and new custom fabrics. In 1954, the Nash Ambassadors had a big feature: the completely new interior by Rother.
After Nash, she purchased a home on Chicago Boulevard in Detroit, with living quarters upstairs and a studio downstairs, where she continued other independent consulting work for or with a number of automotive-related companies including Miller-Meteor, a company known for its ambulances and hearses, Goodyear, B.F. Goodrich, U.S. Rubber, Stromberg-Carlson, and International Harvester.
Her client list included non-automotive firms too, like Magnavox and Elgin American. She also designed a sterling flatware pattern called "Skylark" for Samuel Kirk and Son, silver craftsmen firm since 1815, that the company issued from 1954 into the late-1980s.
Later, she designed stained glass windows for churches throughout the country, a remarkable career move she would continue the rest of her life, along with raising horses on her ranch in Metamora Michigan
The designed stained glass she made for American churches in the mid-1960s were mainly in Michigan, such as the Beverly Hills United Methodist Church in Beverly Hills Michigan, and the St. Lazarus Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in northeast Detroit
Yes, from Parisian jeweler, to Marvel comic artist, to Nash interiors, to stained glass. I emphasis this to increase the focus for a moment on how amazing a person's life can be, and how varied the careers in just one life can be. Ask your grandparents, if you can, to write their biographies, I believe you'll find your family members lives to be astonishing when looked at in total.
All of that ought to be enough to cause you to have little surprise that there is now an award in automotive design, in her name, and will be an event in Las Vegas in Oct 2019.
The Helene Awards Banquet and Ceremony will honor 12 deserving innovators throughout the automotive industry for outstanding achievements is the design, development and future of the automobile.
https://56packardman.com/2018/04/10/gear-head-tuesday-automotive-designer-helene-rother/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/stan-lee-dead-marvel-comics-real-life-superhero-was-95-721450
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2005/07/Helene-Rother/1280817.html
https://alchetron.com/Helene-Rother
https://www.lasvegasconcours.com/the-helene-awards-banquet-1/
https://timeline.com/helene-rother-64363eb9f8aa
ps, I didn't know that Dean's Garage lifted stories from other sites
http://www.deansgarage.com/2018/damsels-of-design/ is a complete copy of
https://www.core77.com/posts/49498/The-Story-Behind-GMs-Celebrated-
