Helene Pons

Helene Wermicheff was born on April 30, 1898 in Tiflis, Russian Empire in what is today Tbilisi, Georgia.^[2] Her mother, Varva, was a pianist who had trained under a teacher that had studied with Ludwig van Beethoven. Her father, Christofor Avaloumovitch Wermicheff, was an aristocrat, writer, and journalist who studied with Leo Tolstoy and worked as a newspaper publisher. He was elected mayor of Tiflis in 1904. Christofor sent his wife and daughter to Switzerland just prior to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905.^[1]

Helene was educated in Switzerland and an art school in Paris;^[4] arriving in France in 1920.^[5] While studying in Paris she met her future husband George Pons who was then technical director of La Chauve-Souris, a Parisian theatre company made up of Russian expats.^[5] Helene got a job with La Chauve-Souris as a doll maker and traveled with the company on their 1921 tour of England.^[1] On 8 November 1921 Helene and George married in London.^[6] She subsequently adopted his name professionally.^[2]

Pons and her husband immigrated to the United States; arriving in the US from England via the SS Lapland on January 31, 1922.^[6] She later became a naturalized American citizen in 1933.^[6] She and her husband established the George & Helene Pons Studio (GHPS, often shortened to Helene Pons Studio) in New York City which fabricated both original designs by Helene and costumes designed by other artists.^[2] GHPS specialized in made-to-order costumes; making from scratch garments that were often labour intensive and unique. They would sometimes be brought into a production that was largely designed by someone else to design or make highly specific and unusual costumes that lay outside of the skillset of the primary designer.^[7] Helene was also the primary costume designer for many Broadway shows,^[2] and was a member of the Theatrical Costumers Association.^[8]

GHPS was initially just a two person business with Helene and George as the sole employees working out of their apartment in New York City.^[9] It was located at 112 W. 44th Street.^[10] The couple's first project was designing for Henry Dreyfuss's Presentations which opened at Broadway's Strand Theatre in 1924 and ran for three years.^[9] Other early work on Broadway included designing costumes for Thornton Wilder's The Trumpet Shall Sound (1926) and A. A. Milne's The Ivory Door (1927).^[2] Outside of Broadway, Helene designed costumes for Mikhail Mordkin's Russian ballet company for their 1927 tour,^[11] and designed costumes for 1927 short films made by the Boston company Colorart Pictures.^[12] In 1930 costumes she had made for the Metropolitan Opera were repurposed for a production of Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Princess Marries the Page in Philadelphia with a cast that included composers Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti as soldiers.^[13]

In 1931 Pons patented the first commercial underwire bra;^[14] a technique that came from her originating methods of strapless boning and foundation for costumes. This design incorporated an open ended wire loop and is still used by the fashion industry in the 21st century.^[15] In the 1930s she designed costumes for the Broadway productions of Second Little Show (1930),^[16] Hey Nonny Nonny! (1932),^[17] The Mad Hopes (1932),^[2] The Lady from the Sea (1934),^[18] Revenge with Music (1934),^[19] Mansion on the Hudson (1935),^[20] The Golden Journey (1936),^[21] A Doll's House (1937),^[22] Babes in Arms (1937),^[23] Brown Sugar (1937),^[24] Edna His Wife (1937),^[25] Our Town (1938),^[26] and The Primrose Path (1939) among others.^[2] For the 1939 New York World's Fair she designed costumes for Kurt Weill and Edward Hungerford's musical Railroads on Parade.^[27][28]

As GHPS's business grew beyond what Pons and her husband could execute alone, the couple hired additional staff and moved the business out of their apartment to much larger premises on the 13th floor of a building at 254 54th Street in Manhattan. By 1943 George and Helene had 12 full time employees making costumes for their business.^[29] The organization was particularly well known in the New York theatre community for being able to respond well to costume emergencies with rapid turn-around and skill.^[29] It was also innovative in its use of dyes, stains, and distressing fabric to make it look aged. Helene pioneered several techniques that have become standard in the costume industry; including inventing a method of knitting metallic cord to create costume chain mail for the original production of Camelot (1960).^[29]

Some of the Broadway productions Pons designed for in the 1940s included Ladies in Retirement (1940),^[30] Five Alarm Waltz (1941),^[31] Watch on the Rhine (1941),^[32] The Distant City (1941),^[33] The Three Sisters (1942),^[34] Portrait in Black (1947),^[35] Duet for Two Hands (1947),^[36] The Men We Marry (1948),^[37] and Hedda Gabler (1948) among others.^[2] Her designs for a 1941-1942 production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth were so well received that she was invited to create her own ready-to-wear fashion line based on the fabrics from the show which was carried by American department stores.^[3] The following year the apron she designed for the play Harriet led her to an invitation to design a line of aprons^[3] for Bloomingdale's.^[38] She also made the costumes for the original productions of Pal Joey (1940) and Kiss Me, Kate (1948).^[5]

Pon made more than 200 costumes that were designed by Donald Oenslager for the Metropolitan Opera's ("Met") 1947 productions of Martha and Fidelio.^[39] In 1948 she designed the costumes for the of a new ballet by Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo (BRMC), Billy Sunday.^[40] She had previously designed for the BRMC's production of The Public Gardens which was given at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1936.^[41] In 1950 she designed the costumes for Herbert Ross's first ballet, Caprichos, which was staged by the American Ballet Theatre at the Center Theatre.^[42] In 1952 she designed costumes for the Met's new production of Aida.^[43]

In the 1950s Pons created designs for the Broadway productions Paris '90 (1952),^[44] The Time of the Cuckoo (1952),^[45] The Skin of Our Teeth (1955),^[46] Holiday for Lovers (1957),^[47] and Maria Golovin (1958).^[48] In 1952 she designed the costumes for Zachary Solov's new ballet Mlle. Fifi which premiered in Boston and was created as a starring vehicle for Alexandra Danilova.^[49] It later ran at the Century Theatre in New York in a production by the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet.^[50] In 1956 she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Costume Design at the 10th Tony Awards for her designs for three 1955 plays: The Diary of Anne Frank, A View from the Bridge, and The Heavenly Twins.^[2] She also contributed costumes designs to the film White Christmas (1954),^[2] and made the costumes for the original production of My Fair Lady (1956).^[5]

Helene's husband, George, died in 1959.^[51] After his death she continued to operate GHPS for six more years.^[3] Some of her final designs for Broadway were for A Lovely Light (1960),^[52] Sail Away (1961),^[53] and Love and Kisses (1963).^[54] She authored the children's book The Story of Vanya (1963, Viking Press) which was a popular success upon its release. It was based on stories of her brother from his childhood, and was originally written for her three grandchildren.^[3] Upon her retirement in 1965 she moved to Rome to be near her daughter, Giselle Pons-Marziale, who lived their with her Italian husband and their children.^[3] In 1970 an exhibition of her art sketches was given at the Wright Hepburn Webster Gallery in New York City.^[55]

Pons died of kidney disease at a health clinic in Rome, Italy on April 19, 1990 at the age of 91.^[5]

Costumes designed by Helene Pons unless otherwise indicated.