Lavater spent the first nine years of her life in Moscow and Athens. In 1922, her mother (the author Mary Lavater-Sloman) and father (Emil Lavater, an engineer) settled the family back in Winterthur. After attending High School, Lavater studied graphic arts in Zurich from 1931 to 1935 at the "Fachklasse für Grafik an der Kunstgewerbeschule Grafik" (School of Applied Arts). It was here, in 1932, she began studying under Ernst Keller in a class of 28 of which 7 were women. Later in life, Lavater recalled this training:What we were learning was design, and so we began with the most important thing, drawing. Where do you put a sign in a rectangle? What is the standard solution to this exercise? Should the strongest element be the sign or the drawing? How can both be distinguished at a distance, yet integrated in a composition?