71-Year-Old Fashion Star Tziporah Salamon Has Ageless Style

Tziporah Salamon is not your typical fashion model. Though she has a colorful, unique style and wears beautifully tailored clothing like other models, she didn’t start her career until she was 62 years old. Now, at 71, she has over 36,000 Instagram followers, shows up in campaigns for Gucci, H&M, Kate Spade and Sunglass Hut and has put out a book called “The Art of Dressing: Ageless, Timeless, Original Style.”

“I feel very blessed in my life,” Salamon, who is based in New York but visits Los Angeles frequently, told the Journal. “I really didn’t plan on being an author or a model. Life has only gotten better and more expansive for me.”

Salamon was born to two Holocaust survivors. Her father was in a labor camp, where he had to dig ditches and cut down trees with 100 other boys. Eventually, though, he was assigned a job as a tailor.

“It was my father’s luck that he sewed the Nazi uniforms for Hungarian soldiers. He mended the Jewish boys’ overalls, and that saved his life.” — Tziporah Salamon

“One day, the SS guard asked for a tailor, and 20 hands shot up, of course, because many of the Jews were tailors,” Salamon said. “It was my father’s luck that he sewed the Nazi uniforms for Hungarian soldiers. He mended the Jewish boys’ overalls, and that saved his life.”

Salamon’s mother had been working at the fanciest dress shop in Budapest when she was captured and taken on a death march. She and her friend had a jar of jam they shared while on the march, which ended up saving their lives. 

After the war, Salamon’s parents moved to Netanya, Israel; her father opened up a tailoring shop, and her mother opened a dress store. 

“My childhood in Israel was incredibly blessed,” said Salamon. “I was Tzipy the tailor’s daughter. I grew up with the country, as the busses were starting. It was beautiful.”

However, the family soon decided to try to make it in the United States, and they moved to Brooklyn. “I really didn’t want to leave,” said Salamon. “I begged my parents to let me stay in Israel.”

Though Salamon was the daughter of a tailor and a dressmaker, she didn’t think to go into fashion as a career. Instead, she got her masters in English literature from UC Santa Barbara and a doctorate in psychology at Berkeley University. When she returned to New York, she worked at Barneys as a sales girl, and then began assisting stylists.

“I hated what we were working on,” she said. “Most of the commercials were for Tide laundry detergent. I thought, ‘What does this have to do with taste?’”

She dropped out of the industry and worked in the restaurant business for 30 years, amassing a collection of vintage clothes along the way. 

“I knew to go vintage because I saw how the clothes were made so much better,” she said. “They were one of a kind.” 

One Simchat Torah, when Salamon was wearing her vintage clothing and dancing on the street, she met a Holocaust survivor named Lucie Porges, who was teaching a course at the Parsons School of Design. She asked Salamon to bring her clothes to the class and teach students about vintage style, which she ended up doing twice a year for 10 years. 

Then, Salamon started her own course, “The Art of Dressing MasterClass,” and she became legendary New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham’s muse for his “On The Street” page. Nowadays, she keeps herself busy with modeling gigs and posting on Instagram. 

In reflecting on her life and career, Salamon said, “Style is very important to me. I grew up with very stylish parents, and I think it’s really important because it makes a difference in how you show up. When you look good, you feel good.”

She continued, “Style is something that takes you through life and adds beauty to the world, and God knows we need beauty. It uplifts us and the energy wherever we go.”