Lea Gottlieb

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]

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

Gottex swimsuits, 1961

Lea Gottlieb with models

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 exporter, shipping 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 beach outfits 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]

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 ($98 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] In 1991, almost half of the company's $60 million business was in the United States.[19]

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][20][21]

• Israeli fashion