Shirley Novick

Shirley Novick migrated from Poland to Canada and was “smuggled” down to New York City carrying little more than two suitcases, a mandolin (which she could play), several embroidered pillows, and an immigrant’s dream of a better life. She went to work for 47 years in the garment trade starting at $5 a week, and made dresses for Lord & Taylor and other Fifth Avenue stores (one of which was worn by Liza Minnelli). When Novick began to speak out for better working conditions—the only Jewish worker in an Italian shop to do so—she became the black sheep. “But I wasn’t a black sheep, I was enterprising…I was a red sheep,” she declares in an interview conducted by her cousin, the singer Lou Reed, featured in the documentary film “Red Shirley” that Reed directed and scored.