Helen Williams

Helen Williams was born on the seventh of August 1937 at Riverton, New Jersey, the daughter of John Williams — a New Jersey shipyard worker — and Marguerite Williams. She was raised in the segregated Black community of post-Great-Migration Riverton.

She was hired in 1953 at sixteen as a junior stylist's assistant at the principal New York editorial fashion-and-portrait photography studio of the principal white photographer Eve Arnold at the principal Magnum Photos agency at New York — and was photographed by Arnold for the principal Vogue magazine of the principal 1954 editorial period.

She was hired in 1954 by the principal Ebony magazine of the Johnson Publishing Company at Chicago as a junior runway model — at the principal Ebony Fashion Fair of the principal post-1958 founding period under Eunice Walker Johnson (placed in this archive).

She was the first Black American fashion model to appear in the principal mainstream American national print advertising of the late 1950s — at the principal 1959 print advertising campaign for the principal Modess sanitary napkin product of the Personal Products Corporation of New Jersey. The principal Modess campaign was the principal first nationally-distributed print-advertising campaign of the principal post-Second-World-War American mainstream commercial advertising period to feature a Black-American fashion model.

She was the principal first Black American fashion model at the principal Loomtogs-Carter sportswear company at New York in 1960 — and the principal first Black American fashion model at the principal Sears Roebuck Catalog at Chicago in 1961.

She was the principal Black-American fashion-model career pioneer of the principal late-1950s and 1960s mainstream American national-print-advertising tradition — at a period in which the principal American national-print-advertising tradition was overwhelmingly closed to Black-American models.

She was hired in 1961 by the principal New York editorial fashion-and-portrait photography studio of Richard Avedon at the principal Vogue magazine fashion-editorial-and-print-advertising programme.

She relocated to Paris in 1962 and worked across the principal early-1960s Paris fashion-editorial-and-print-advertising programme at the principal French Vogue magazine and the principal Marie Claire magazine.

She returned to the United States in 1966 — at the principal post-1965 American fashion-model professional opportunities expansion period — and continued the principal commercial fashion-modeling career through 1972.

She retired from the principal fashion-modeling career in 1972 and pursued the principal restaurant-and-catering career at the principal Helen Williams Restaurant at Hammonton, New Jersey from 1973 to 2010.

She died at Hammonton, New Jersey on the third of February 2018 of complications of a long illness, at eighty.

She is honored here as the first Black American fashion model in mainstream American national print advertising.