Sighs and Whispers

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 for every Interview magazine up until Warhol's death in 1987—a prodigious volume of work that serves as an archive of 1970s and 1980s celebrity culture. In the late 1970s, Richard Bernstein became friends with Grace Jones, helping to mold her visual identity as she first emerged as a singer. The duo continued to work together for many years. Richard was also an early innovator in digital art.

Rory is Richard's nephew and the one entrusted with maintaining and carrying forward his legacy. In our conversation, he provides a short biography of Richard, his artistic career and relationship with Andy Warhol. We then speak about what is like to run an artist’s estate, what it entails, and the process of archiving. Rory was instrumental in the creation of a coffee table book on Richard, Starmaker, which was published by Rizzoli in 2018; he has also loaned Richard’s work to numerous museum exhibitions and collaborated with a number of fashion and interiors brands.

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For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/ episode-31-richard-bernstein-estate

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms

Featured Guest Rory Trifon

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 influential series of guidebooks, starting with Egon Ronay's Guide to British Eateries in 1957. As a teen Edina became an actress, appearing in a number of cult British films. She was a key member of the hip London scene and dated Michael Caine before she met her husband, photographer Dick Polak. With him, she lived in Morocco and Formentera, until they returned to London to act, model and have children.

In the early 1970s Edina began selling vintage clothes. This led to her starting a knitwear label based on vintage knitting patterns, which eventually grew into her own fashion label. Edina Ronay showed at London Fashion Week and was sold all over the world. Throughout her career, she was at the center of swinging and creative London. We cover all of this and more, including her over 50-year marriage, motherhood and spirituality.

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For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-30-edina-ronay

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms 


Featured Guest Edina Ronay

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 for everyone and truly across all genres. Fashion, interiors, portraits, food, travel, crafts, documentary, and movie stills—Susan did it all at a time when there were very few female photographers in the industry. Among the magazines she worked for were Vogue, New York Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, Mademoiselle, People, LOOK, Good Housekeeping, and Glamour. We discuss her 60 year career, what it was like working as a female photographer at that time, her creative process, the many famous people she has photographed and much more.

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For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-29-susan-wood

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms


Featured Guest Susan Wood

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 teenager—according to all reports she had disappeared but Hugo found her living in a geriatric psych ward. Thus began the several year process of interviewing her and researching Gladys’ life as the Duchess of Marlborough—his biography of her was published in 1979 to much acclaim. This book led to a request from Cecil Beaton to write his biography, followed by books about Garbo, Vivien Leigh, and many members of the royal family. After quickly establishing himself as an expert on all matters to do with the royal family, Hugo made his first appearance as a royal commentator during Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981. Since then he has become one of the most well-known and highly regarded in the UK.

A fount of information on a world that has largely disappeared, he joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss how his interests became his career, how he approaches writing and research, the royal family and more.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-28-hugo-vickers

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms


Featured Guest Hugo Vickers

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. Weaving easily between high-class entertaining and a high-powered career, Shirley worked for British Harper’s Bazaar and the Evening Standard in London before leaving her marriage in the early 1970s to move to New York. After a stint as beauty director of Harper’s Bazaar, she became beauty editor of Vogue—a job that she would have in some capacity for most of the next 40 years, only leaving briefly to be vice president of Helena Rubinstein. In the 1980s she married Abe Rosenthal, the legendary editor of the New York Times—they were together until his death in 2011. Shirley Lord has written two beauty books as well as several novels drawing on her deep knowledge of the glamorous fashion and beauty industries.

Truly a woman who self-created her life, she joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss her journalism career, her five marriages, and all things beauty.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-26-shirley-lord

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms 


Featured Guest Shirley Lord

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 herself, over the next twenty years Tereba designed for all of the major Los Angeles fashion companies (including Malibu Media and Jody T.), before starting her own eponymous high-end line in the late 1980s. Alongside her high-powered fashion design career, Tere maintained a very busy social life among the upper echelons of the film and art worlds—good friends with the likes of Andy Warhol, she also spent a lot of time in Paris and Rome in the 1970s with the crème de la crème of the European movie world. After many years of friendship she acted in Andy Warhol’s Bad in 1977. After ten years of research, her book on a notorious gangster (Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster) was published in 2012.

For full show notes, video clips, and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-26-tere-tereba

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms 
Featured Guest Tere Tereba

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 world and people around her. Following her retirement in 2007 that she began to delve into her old, boxed-up contact sheets and negatives—revealing a New York that was long gone, captured in a totally individual and unique manner. Since then Meisler’s photographic career has had a renaissance; publishing three books of her photographs—centering mostly on Bushwick, disco and Long Island suburbia—and has participated in countless gallery exhibitions.

She joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss her childhood, NYC in the 70s and 80s, her creative process, balancing a full-time job and her creative pursuits, and her future projects.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-25-meryl-meisler

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms


Featured Guest Meryl Meisler

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 many years she worked at Empire State College, a SUNY school for adult students that is centered on individualized study—there she taught in addition to developing curriculum and special programs. She started a second whole career after retirement and has since published four books. She joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss the Brownsville of her childhood, the opening up of women’s lives and options in the last 70 years, her careers and relationships, the appeal of oral history, road trips and more.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-24-carole-bell-ford

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms

Featured Guest Carole Bell Ford

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 originator of what came to be called performance art.” She joins host Laura McLaws Helms to discuss the winding road of her life, family history, artistic influences, becoming a performance artist, her personal life and healing journey, in addition to her thoughts about New York and American culture at the moment.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/episode-23-penny-arcade

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms

Featured Guest Penny Arcade

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-scale festival events, radio and TV broadcasts, film soundtracks, advertising jingles and commercial soundscapes. Among his many projects he organized a Summer Solstice celebration annually in NYC from 1973 to 1989.

For full show notes, episode resources and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://sighswhispers.com/ episode-22-charlie-morrow

Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms

Featured Guest Charlie Morrow