Lea Gottlieb

Lea Gottlieb
Born Leah Lenke Roth[1]
September 17, 1918
Sajószentpéter, Hungary
Died November 17, 2012 (age 94)[1]
Tel Aviv, Israel
Residence Tel Aviv, Israel
Nationality Israeli
Other names Lady Leah[2]
Occupation Fashion designer
Known for Founder and chief designer of Gottex
Religion Jewish
Spouse(s) Armin Gottlieb
Children daughters Judith Gottlieb and Miriam Ruzow

Lea Gottlieb (September 17, 1918 - November 17, 2012) was an Israeli swimwear fashion designer.[1] She immigrated to Israel from Hungary after World War II, and founded the Gottex company.[3][4][5][6]

Biography

Lea Lenke Roth (later Gottlieb) was born in Sajószentpéter, Hungary. Before World War II began, she was planning to study chemistry.[2] During Germany's occupation of Hungary in the mid-1940s, her husband Armin was shipped to a labor camp.[2] Gottlieb—who was Jewish—hid from the Nazis in Sajószentpéter and Budapest, moving from one hiding place to another with her daughters Miriam and Judith.[2] At checkpoints, she hid her head in a bouquet of flowers to avoid being recognized as a Jew.[6][7][8] Once, after seeing a Nazi with a pistol, she concealed herself and her children in a pit behind a house.[7][9]

Fashion career

Gottex swimsuits, 1961

Gottlieb and her family survived the war, and after the liberation, she and her husband ran a raincoat factory in Czechoslovakia.[6] They immigrated to Haifa, Israel in 1949.[7] She recalled: "We came with nothing, without money, with nowhere to live. The first two or three years were very, very hard."[7][8]

With money borrowed from family and friends, she and her husband opened a similar raincoat factory near Tel Aviv in 1949.[5][8] But for months, they “saw no rain, only sunshine.”[5][7]

As a result, in 1956 they founded Gottex, a high-fashion beachwear and swimwear company that became a leading Israeli brand outside of Israel, exporting to 80 countries.[3][6][7][8] The company's name is a combination of "Gottlieb" and "textiles".[10]

Gottlieb, a seamstress, began by selling her wedding ring to raise money to buy fabric.[9][11] She borrowed a sewing machine, and sewed swimsuits in their Jaffa apartment.[9][11]

She was the company’s chief designer.[7][12][13] As the company expanded, Gottlieb created attractive beach outfits for having fun at luxury beaches, by complementing swimsuits with matching tops, pareos, caftans, tunics, loose pants, small corsets and skirts.[14] Her collections often had dramatic and varied patterns that were inspired by and dominated by flowers, which she felt had saved her life during the Nazi occupation.[6][13][14][15][16][17][18] Stitching was known to be meticulous, the prints magnificent and varied.[14]

In 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, Gottlieb canceled a foreign tour, took over operations at Gottex, and arranged fashion shows for front-line soldiers.[3] By 1984, Gottex had sales of $40 million ($91 million in current dollar terms), and was the leading exporter of fashion swimwear to the United States, and had two-thirds of the Israeli swimwear market.[2] Among those who wore the company's bathing suits were Diana, Princess of Wales, Spain's Queen Sofia, Elizabeth Taylor, Brooke Shields and Nancy Kissinger.[2] The company's 1984 strapless one-piece swimsuit became the most widely sold style in the world.[19] In 1991, almost half of the company's $60 million business was in the United States.[20]

Lev Leviev, the owner of the Africa-Israel Group, acquired Gottex in 1997.[11] After about a year heading the design team, Gottlieb left the company.[5][9][12] Once her non-compete agreement with Gottex expired, at the age of 85 she founded a new swimwear design company, under her own name.[5][12][21][22]

Gottlieb died at her home in Tel Aviv on November 12, 2012 at the age of 94.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Martin, Douglas (November 19, 2012). "Leah Gottlieb, a Designer of Swimsuits, Dies at 94". The New York Times.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rudolph, Barbara (June 3, 1985). "Israel's Place in the Sun". TIME. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 "Tel Aviv Fashion Houses Busy; Beach Design Continued While War Alerts Were On". The Calgary Herald. November 30, 1973. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  4. ↑ Helen Hennessey (April 23, 1971). "Sexy Coverups Heat the Beach". The Tuscaloosa New. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Greer Fay Cashman (April 15, 2005). "Grapevine". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "‘My Homeland: Holocaust Survivors in Israel’: new exhibition opens at Yad Vashem". European Jewish Press. April 28, 2008. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kershner, Isabel (May 6, 2008). "Honoring Survival, and Gifts to a Nation". The New York Times (Israel). Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Ackerman, Gwen (May 5, 2008). "Holocaust Survivors, Feted at Museum, Recount Struggle, Triumph". Bloomberg. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Orit Arfa (February 20, 2007). "Designing woman". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  10. ↑ Andrea Heiman (April 23, 1993). "Good Gottex! Women Seeking Bold, Slimming Swimwear Make Israeli Company No. 1 in America". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  11. 1 2 3 Mari Davis, Tom Massey, Boyd Davis (September 9, 2006). "Gottex, Fashion Designer". Fashion Windows. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  12. 1 2 3 Greer Fay Cashman (May 17, 2006). "Making a splash". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  13. 1 2 "A blues (and whites) festival in Memphis". Israel21c.org. May 4, 2003. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  14. 1 2 3 Mainemer, Ilit (July 18, 2007). "From Tantura to St. Tropez". Haaretz. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  15. ↑ Greer Fay Cashman (March 26, 1998). "Gottex – beachwear fit for a ballroom". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  16. ↑ Greer Fay Cashman (February 19, 1992). "1492 and all that". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  17. ↑ Greer Fay Cashman (January 6, 1994). "Beachwear Firm Swims With The Political Tide". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Israel is on Parade". The Sydney Morning Herald. July 3, 1977. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  19. ↑ Breuer, Shira (May 17, 2006). "A nostalgic show with pareo". Haaretz. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  20. ↑ Bernadine Morris (June 29, 1991). "When Finding Swimsuit Flatter is Step No. 1". The Dispatch. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
  21. ↑ Hanan Sher (May 16, 2005). "Still in Fashion at 85". The Jerusalem Report. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  22. ↑ "Ticker". The Jerusalem Report. May 2, 2005. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
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