Lea Gottlieb

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Lea Gottlieb (left) with her team (1980)

Lea Gottlieb (born September 17, 1918 in Sajószentpéter ; died November 17, 2012 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli fashion designer who designed swimwear and sportswear. After the Second World War she emigrated from Hungary to Israel , where she founded the Gottex company.

Life

Lea Lenke Roth (later Gottlieb) was born the only child of a poor Jewish family in the Hungarian village of Sajószentpéter and grew up with an aunt. Before the Second World War , she had actually planned to study chemistry. During the German occupation of Hungary, her husband Armin was deported to a labor camp. As a Jew she had to hide from the Nazis, together with her daughters Miriam and Judith she moved from one hiding place to the next in Sajószentpéter and Budapest . When she passed checkpoints, she would hide her head behind a bouquet of flowers to avoid being recognized as a Jew.

The family survived the war and the Holocaust . After the liberation, Lea Gottlieb and her husband ran a raincoat factory in Czechoslovakia . In 1949 they emigrated completely penniless to Haifa in Israel, where they also opened a raincoat factory with money borrowed from friends and family, which was not at all successful because of the sunny weather in Israel. Lea Gottlieb sold her wedding ring to buy fabric and started sewing swimsuits on a borrowed sewing machine in her apartment in Tel Aviv- Jaffa. In 1965 Lea and Armin Gottlieb founded the Gottex company, which produced beach fashion and swimwear.

In 2005, Lea Gottlieb was voted one of the 200 most important personalities in the country in a survey by the Israeli Internet news site Ynet, and she came in 167th. Lea Gottlieb died on November 12, 2012 at the age of 94 in her home in Tel Aviv .

The Gottex company

Gottex swimwear, 1961

The name Gottex is a combination of the words "Gottlieb" and "Textilien". Gottex has become one of the leading export companies in Israel, selling products to more than 80 countries. Lea Gottlieb was the chief designer. As the company expanded, it designed swimsuits as well as sophisticated beach outfits that complemented the swimsuits and such as tops, pareo wrap skirts, caftans, wide trousers, corsets and skirts that could be put on after the beach stay. Her collections were characterized by daring geometric patterns and, above all, flowers in a wide variety of eye-catching colors, which reminded her that flowers had saved her life during the Nazi era.

When the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973 , Lea Gottlieb organized fashion shows for the soldiers fighting on the front. In Israel, Gottex had a market share of around two thirds. Gottex became the leading importer of luxury swimwear in the United States. Gottex swimwear wearers include many celebrities, including Princess Diana , Queen Sofia of Spain , actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Brooke Shields, and former US First Lady Jackie Onassis . The company's top seller was a strapless one-piece swimsuit that was sold and worn all over the world. The models Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell presented Gottex fashion at international fashion shows, but the main representative of the company for many years was the Israeli model Tami Ben-Ami , who already worked for Gottex during her military service.

In 1997 Lev Leviev , Managing Director of Africa Israel Investments Limited (AFIL), took over Gottex. Lea Gottlieb headed the design department for another year and then left the company to found another fashion company under her own name at the age of 85, where she worked until she was 90.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lea Gottlieb, queen of Israeli fashion, dies at 94 , obituary in the Jerusalem Post, accessed March 19, 2014.
  2. ↑ Lady of the Daisies - A Tribute to Lea Gottlieb , text for the exhibition of the same name at the Design Museum Holon, accessed on March 19, 2014.
  3. ↑ Lea Gottlieb: Swimsuit Mogul and Survivor!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 19, 2013@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lionesswomansclub.com  
  4. ^ Ynet website , accessed on March 19, 2014
  5. ↑ Entry at Bikinicentral ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 19, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bikinicentral.com
  6. ^ Making a Splash , Jerusalem Post article, accessed March 19, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Gottlieb, Lea
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roth, lea Lenke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Sajószentpéter
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 2012
Place of death Tel Aviv