Zachary Selig - Early Life

Early Life

Selig is the son of New York born American steel manufacturing industrialist and economic advisor Marvin Selig and Eleanor Berg Selig, a Texas commissioner of mental health under 3 United States presidents. He was born in Seguin, Texas and later lived with his mother's family in the Hudson River Valley and in Manhattan. Selig's mother's cousin Robert Carter Fielding and his wife Gertrude became Selig's surrogate parents, who guided him into an international world of art and accomplished artists that built the foundation of his career. Another maternal family relation, New York publicist Lee Goode Kingsley, was instrumental in establishing Selig's relations in the art world. Charles Revson, his mother's cousin and co-founder of Revlon, invited 17 year old Selig on board the Revlon yacht Ultima II in Acapulco and introduced him to many guests that later became his lifetime friends, including Merle Oberon, Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Dolores del Rio, Ahmet Ertegun and his wife Mica, Chito and Jeanette Jaffe de Longoria, Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, jewelry designer Aldo Cipullo, Vogue magazine editor DD Ryan, and publicist Eleanor Lambert.