Lea Gottlieb
| Lea Gottlieb | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Leah Lenke Roth September 17, 1918 Sajószentpéter, Hungary |
| Died | November 17, 2012 (aged 94) Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Residence | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Other names | Lady Leah |
| Occupation | Fashion designer, businesswoman |
| Known for | Founder and chief designer of Gottex |
| Spouse(s) | Armin Gottlieb |
| Children | Judith Gottlieb and Miriam Ruzow |
Lea Gottlieb (September 17, 1918 - November 17, 2012) was an Israeli fashion designer and businesswoman. She immigrated to Israel from Hungary after World War II, and founded the Gottex company.
Lea Lenke Roth (later Gottlieb) was born in Sajószentpéter, Hungary. Before World War II began, she was planning to study chemistry. During Germany's occupation of Hungary in the mid-1940s, her husband Armin was shipped to a labor camp. 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. At checkpoints, she hid her head in a bouquet of flowers to avoid being recognized as a Jew. Once, after seeing a Nazi with a pistol, she concealed herself and her children in a pit behind a house.
Gottlieb and her family survived the war, and after the liberation, she and her husband ran a raincoat factory in Czechoslovakia. They immigrated to Haifa, Israel in 1949. She recalled: "We came with nothing, without money, with nowhere to live. The first two or three years were very, very hard."
With money borrowed from family and friends, she and her husband opened a similar raincoat factory near Tel Aviv in 1949. But for months, they “saw no rain, only sunshine.”
As a result, in 1956 they founded Gottex, a high-fashion beachwear and swimwear company that became a leading exporter, shipping to 80 countries. The company's name is a combination of "Gottlieb" and "textiles".
Gottlieb, a seamstress, began by selling her wedding ring to raise money to buy fabric. She borrowed a sewing machine, and sewed swimsuits in their Jaffa apartment.
She was the company’s chief designer. As the company expanded, Gottlieb created beach outfits by complementing swimsuits with matching tops, pareos, caftans, tunics, loose pants, small corsets and skirts. 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.
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