Cipe Pineles studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In 1938, she beagn working for Dr.Agha, the art director at vanity fair and Vogue. Influenced by his progressive principles of editorial design, she eventually became art director for Glamour magazine. Although she specifically worked for a fashion magazine, she practised design journalism, not decoration. It was her long term tenure at Conde Nast publications that made her eligible and then admitted as the first woman to the New York Art Director's Club. During World War II, Pineles worked in Paris with her husband William Golden. After the war, she becme art director for Seventeen magazine. Her work for Seventeen was significant in the use of painters as editorial illustrators, among them Jacob Lawrence, Robert Gualtney, Philip Evergood, Ben Shahn, Andy Warhol, Ed Reinhardt, Richard Lidner and Jerome Snyder. In 1950 she was named art director of Charm, a magazine targeted for women who work. She then moved on to become art director at Madamoiselle. After Golden's death, she worked as an independent consultant, designer and teacher at Parson's School of Design for many years. In 1975, she became the first woman to be elected to the Art Director's Hall of Fame.