Erika Elias: Charlie's Girls, Youth Fashion, and Life in the Garment Industry

Fashion and cultural historian Laura McLaws Helms speaks with fashion designer Erika Elias. Now 95, Erika Elias was born in Vienna in 1930 and raised in Czechoslovakia before escaping to America with her family in 1940. Once in New York City, she studied at the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) and Parsons before starting a career in fashion in the 1950s. By 1960, she was head designer at Juniorite, Inc., a junior sportswear brand. Highly skilled at understanding how to translate the youth movement on the street into mass market clothes, in 1967 she was brought into start Charlie’s Girls, a new juniors sportswear line of funky, inexpensive pieces. For six years, Charlie’s Girls was one of the most successful brands in America, often selling hundreds of thousands of units per garment, leading Rags Magazine to write, “Erika Elias has more fashion influence than anyone you’ve ever heard of.” Erika was a true career woman—her complete focus was on designing and advancing her career at a time when that was unusual for a woman. To sign up for my newsletter, visit https://laurakitty.substack.com/ For full show notes, episode resources, video clips, and a slideshow of photographs, head to https://www.sighswhispers.com/episodes/episode-50-erika-elias Produced and hosted by Laura McLaws Helms Featured Guest Erika Elias