Helene Rother
Helene Rother (1908–1999) was the first woman to work as an automotive designer when she joined the interior styling staff of General Motors in Detroit, US in 1943. She specialized in designs for automotive interiors, as well as furniture, jewelry, fashion accessories, and stained glass windows. She was posthumously inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2020. Early life A native of Leipzig, Germany, Rother studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule (a school of applied arts) in Hamburg. It is also claimed that she studied at the Bauhaus, although the details of when this occurred remain unclear. No dates are available and some sources say she went to the Weimar Bauhaus (open 1919-1925) and some say Dessau, (open 1926-1932). Rother later moved to Paris , where she designed both high fashion jewelry and popular miniature animal pins worn by women on hats and dresses prior to World War II. In 1932, Rother gave birth to her daughter, Ina Ann Rother, whose father would later be active in the French Resistance and on the run for years. Rother fled from Nazi-occupied France together with her seven-year-old daughter Ina, to a refugee camp in northern Africa where they stayed for four months