Judith Leiber, who died just hours after her husband of 72 years, Gerson Leiber, right, said her handbags were inspired by paintings, museum pieces, artifacts and nature.CHESTER HIGGINS JR./The New York Times
Judith Leiber, the handbag designer whose whimsical creations were prized as collectors’ pieces and frequently displayed as objets d’art, died on Saturday at her home in Springs, N.Y., on Long Island. She was 97.
Ms. Leiber died just hours after the death of her husband of 72 years, the painter, lithographer and sculptor Gerson Leiber, who was known as Gus. He also died at their home.
Both died of heart attacks, according to Jeffrey Sussman, their biographer and spokesman, and they were buried together Monday.
In recent years, the couple had mounted joint exhibitions of their work.
Stella Blum, the curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 1983, once said that describing Judith Leiber as an accessory designer was “a little like calling Louis Comfort Tiffany a designer of lighting fixtures.”
Her handbags were often on view in museums and are in the permanent collections of a number of them, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the Chicago Historical Society. Ms. Leiber nevertheless demurred when Andy Warhol described her bags as works of art. “Truthfully, I don’t consider them art,” she said. “I’m an artisan.”
Although she designed luxurious handbags with discreet clasps and frames for daytime, she was best known for her imaginative and eye-catching evening creations, among them colourfully beaded bags in animal, flower, fruit and egg shapes, and bags shaped like boxes and shells with variations on antique Asian motifs.
A number of Ms. Leiber’s clients amassed scores, and in several cases hundreds, of her designs, despite price tags that reached well into four figures a bag.
At major charity events, it was common for a woman who had left her Leiber evening bag on the table while she danced to find on her return that other guests had gathered around the table to admire it.
Most of Ms. Leiber’s evening bags, particularly the glittering metal creations, were designed to hold a bare minimum of necessities. She allowed that lipstick, a handkerchief and a $100 bill might possibly fit. As for carrying such necessities as eyeglasses, keys and a few other odds and ends, she would ask, “What’s an escort for?”
Ms. Leiber created five collections a year, in all about 100 designs. She said she was inspired by paintings, museum pieces, artefacts and nature. One of her most popular bags was shaped like a snail; another, an example of the commonplace made uncommon, was fashioned from an antique quilt and enhanced with bits of coloured glitter.
The women who carried Leiber bags included first ladies, royalty and celebrities such as Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Diana Ross and Joan Sutherland. The Queen was presented with a bag during a visit to California, and Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev , received one from Barbara Bush.
Ms. Bush carried a Leiber design at her husband’s inaugural ceremony. She also had one of the Leiber metal bags shaped to resemble Millie, her springer spaniel. Other first ladies were customers as well: Nancy Reagan ordered white satin Leiber bags for both her husband’s inaugural balls, and Hillary Clinton had a bag modelled after Socks, the family cat.
Ms. Leiber was born Judith Marianne Peto in Budapest on Jan. 11, 1921. Her parents, Emil and Helen Peto, hoped that she would become a chemist and repeat the success of a relative who had developed a complexion cream. In 1939, she was sent to England to pursue scientific studies, but the Second World War intervened and her theoretical cosmetics empire vanished.
“Hitler put me in the handbag business,” Ms. Leiber said.
Back in Budapest, Ms. Leiber, who was Jewish, enrolled in an artisan guild, which still accepted Jews, although fascism was on the ascent in Hungary. Her training began with sweeping the floors and cooking the glue. By the time she had completed her guild training, first as an apprentice and finally as a master, the war was raging.
She knew all the stages of handbag manufacture, but there was no place to use this knowledge because Jews were being sent to concentration camps. She and other family members escaped that fate when they were pressed into service sewing army uniforms. She also began a small handbag business at home, using whatever materials she could find, and after the war sold some to U.S. soldiers stationed in Hungary.
Gerson Leiber was an Army Signal Corps sergeant in postwar Budapest when he and Judith met. He was working as a radio operator maintaining contact between Vienna and Budapest. They married in 1946 and the next year left for New York, Gerson Leiber’s hometown.
With her training, Ms. Leiber had no difficulty finding work in her adopted country. She worked for a number of handbag manufacturers until 1963, when her husband decided they should open their own business.
They began in a small loft. “I knew from the beginning what I was going to do,” Ms. Leiber said. “I was going to make the best.”
She designed and supervised the manufacture of her bags, and Mr. Leiber looked after the business end.
Ms. Leiber received most of the fashion industry’s major prizes. She was given a Coty fashion award in 1973 and the Neiman Marcus Winged Statue for Excellence in Design in 1980. She was voted accessories designer of the year in 1994 by the Council of Fashion Designers.
The Leibers sold their business in 1993, for a reported US$16-million, to Time Products, a British firm in the watch distribution business. Judith Leiber remained the firm’s designer until 1997.
No immediate family members survive.