No. 256 - Judith Leiber

I learned from this article in the WSJ today that Judith Leiber is a designer of luxury handbags.

What caught my attention was the description in the title of the article about a $3,500 purse. What fascinates me are not the people who would spend that amount of money on a purse, but how someone "convinced" them to spend that amount of money on a purse. We all know that the materials to make it do not justify the price. So how did she do it?

Judith Leiber has an interesting back-story. She was a Jew who escaped the Holocaust when her father was able to obtain a safe passage for her to Switzerland. After the war, she began making handbags at home and then at a friend's small factory. She met and married an American soldier and immigrated to the United States in 1948.

So you're a Holocaust survivor, a handbag maker and you recently arrived in the United States. What do you do? Well as the article says, "In 1953, she designed a glittering pink purse for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower to wear at Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural ball."

And she didn't stop there. Every First Lady since then has carried a Judith Leiber bag to her husband's inauguration. Except Michelle Obama, who didn't.

I suppose the handbags were exquisite enough that the women didn't just pitch them in the trash. Apparently each bag can take up to seven days to fabricate and can cost from $700 to $7,000. And they look a lot like Christmas, I mean Hanukkah, ornaments.