Margaretha Ley

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Margaretha Ley (* 1933 ; † June 4, 1992 ) was a Swedish fashion designer and co-founder of the German luxury fashion brand Escada .

Life

Margaretha Ley was born in Sweden in 1933. After finishing school, she first completed an apprenticeship as a tailor at the royal court tailor Leja in Stockholm . She then worked as a mannequin and made a career in the 1950s as a top model for the haute couture houses Jacques Fath and Christian Dior from Paris. From 1967 to 1976 she worked as chief designer at the Munich fashion company Mondi (insolvency 1999) and finally managed the knitwear company Srb GmbH in Munich, named after her first husband . After Srb's death, she married the Munich entrepreneur Wolfgang Ley (* 1937) in 1974 and together with him launched the Escada clothing line named after a racehorse in 1976 - sporty elegance by Srb in the upper price segment, which a short time later became Escada - sporty elegance and from 1980 in Escada by Margaretha Ley was renamed. In 1978 the first presentation of Escada women's fashion took place.

Margaretha Ley's designs as head designer of the house have received several awards, for example the American Mohair Council with the "Excellence in Design" award . The award for the best designer sportswear collection of the Fashion Group International in the USA (1987) and the Munich fashion award (1988) were some of the other awards she received for her work. Margaretha Ley's idiosyncratic designs, the high-quality, colorful fabrics and sporty-elegant cuts as well as Wolfgang Ley's business skills anchored Escada as a top international fashion brand within a few years. During Margaretha Ley's lifetime, the medium-priced second line Laurèl was introduced (1980), Escada went public (1986), Escada subsidiaries were founded in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, France and Asia (from 1989) and became Escada perfume launched (1990).

Margaretha Ley died in mid-1992 to cancer . She did not live to see the crisis in the company in the early 1990s and bankruptcy in 2009.

Private

She left three children, Sven Ley (* 1975) from her marriage to Wolfgang Ley and Karin Srb and Kristian Srb (* 1956) from her first marriage. Her son Sven Ley is the co-founder of the London-based dog food brand Rockster and her daughter Karin Srb runs the online gallery artsation.com. After her death, Wolfgang Ley continued the company. He resigned from the Escada board on January 31, 2006, but remained associated with the group as a shareholder and until 2007 as creative chairman . At the beginning of 2008, Wolfgang Ley founded the Ley International Fashion Company AG in Munich and brought the Wolfgang Ley women's fashion collection onto the market. The company filed for bankruptcy in February 2009, before Escada.

swell

  1. ^ Spiegel Online: Died: Margaretha Ley , June 15, 1992
  2. ↑ Die Zeit: The German star company Escada has got into a crisis. Now it's slimming down , January 15, 1993
  3. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt: Escada insolvent: Now a new investor should come , November 3, 2009
  4. ^ The New York Times: Margaretha Ley, Chief Designer Of Sportswear Company, Is Dead , June 9, 1992
  5. ^ TZ Munich July 21, 2012: Art instead of fashion
  6. ↑ artsation.com: artsation GmbH
  7. ↑ faz.net: "I wake the sleeping beauty" (Status: October 18, 2006)
personal data
SURNAME Ley, Margaretha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Sweden
DATE OF DEATH 4th June 1992