Judith Leiber Line and Shape Judith Leiber : Line and Shape “I was determined to make my bags as beautiful as possible in line and shape, without ever compromising on materials and workmanship. I have never swerved from that goal” Judith Leiber I grew up in Budapest, Hungary. My father used to work for because he was not sure that Switzerland would remain the Kereskedelmi Bank, where he was a general manager, and independent from the Nazis. So he moved to America and he was very, very successful. He did a great deal of traveling opened a pastry business. at that time. He used to go to the West, to Spain and France I wasn’t terribly interested in fashion in high school. I became and England and Italy, and he was a great businessman. interested in fashion really when I was in London in 1938. I Eventually he retired from banking and went into the jewelry became very interested in clothing and I liked the way it business. looked. But still, I had clothes that were very good that my My mother never worked. She was a housewife. She used to mother bought. When I was young my mother bought all my play bridge with her friends and she played tennis in the clothes, of course. summertime. She also worked on our education, my sister I never finished high school. My parents sent me to England Eva’s and mine, and she was very successful at teaching us. in 1938 at 17 to take the Matriculation Exam, the university We had a very nice apartment in Pest. It was large and had entrance exam, for Kings’s College in London. I was going to beautiful furniture. Eva and I had our own bedroom, which King’s College to study chemistry so I could go into the was next to my parents’ bedroom. My father loved Persian cosmetics business. I went to London, all by myself. I sensed carpets, and we had many. We were very fortunate. it was time to go. I travelled right though Germany, then I When I was a girl, my mother had a lot of very good hand- went to Dover and then took a train to London where one of bags because my father used to buy her nice bags whenever my uncles picked me up. I passed the Matric and was regis- he went to the West. Every time he came home he brought tered at King’s College but unfortunately, I never got to go. I her a beautiful bag. She kept them in a closet, and she wore came home from London for the summer and then the war one every day. She had a brown alligator and she had a red broke out on the 1st of September, 1939, and I couldn’t get leather bag. Some of the bags were from Vienna, where my back anymore. I stayed in Budapest with my family. Hungary mother was born and raised. Others were from Italy, and had become a German ally and had declared war on America. from Spain, and England. She had a lot of different bags. I All the young men were taken to Russia for the labor battal- liked them. They looked very good. ion, but my mother, sister and my father were able to stay I went to elementary school and high school in Budapest. together and stay in our apartment, at first. Our elementary school was very close to the apartment, and During the war we suffered quite a bit, but we were lucky. our high school was bit farther away. The high school we We survived. The lives of Jews were severely limited and the went to was a private high school. We were very lucky. We Hungarian Government had a policy that prevented Jews had a very good education. from going to University. But I wanted to do something, so Before the war, we used to travel west. We went to Italy and my parents helped me get an apprenticeship with a Jewish France and England. In the summers we went to Baveno Handbag manufacturer named Pessl. I learned everything which was on the Lago Maggiore in Italy, and another about making handbags there. I could do the patterns, I summer we spent on the sea shore near Forte dei Marmi. My could do the sewing, I could do the framing. I could do every- father in those days had a business in Milano. My sister and thing to make a handbag. I became a master handbag I went to Paris and London, and we went to many museums. designer and entered the Hungarian Handbag Guild. I was It was already a period when the Germans were very active. the first woman ever accepted into the Guild. So first I was Hitler was already in power from 1933. In 1938 Hitler an apprentice then I became a journeyman and then I occupied Austria and my two uncles decided to move to became a master, and I could work on everything, I could England, to London, from Vienna, and my third uncle went to complete it all. America. He decided to go to Seattle from Switzerland I was also the first female apprentice ever. I was the first girl 1 to try to learn the trade. I was about 18 years old at the time. to this house. We couldn't go out of this house. All of us had In the beginning they wanted me to do errands that I didn’t to stay in there, you couldn't get out. But you know, we used want to do. I really wanted to learn the trade. So after they to have a maid who would come and visit us there. She was sent me out on an errand the second time, instead of doing not Jewish. She was a farm girl, a servant. She couldn’t even the errand, I went home for lunch, because I didn’t like the bring anything to us either. Everything was restricted. But idea. So after that, they never sent me out on errands again, she came to visit. Food was very scarce. We could buy food and I learned the trade, which was the right idea. They but there wasn't much around. There was an Italian family thought since I was a girl, I couldn’t learn the trade. But I who lived in our apartment building on the 3rd floor. Once a showed them. horse was killed on the street outside our apartment build- One of my first jobs was to set up the glue in the morning. ing, and the Italian lady and my mother went out with two In the beginning, I worked on mirrors that had a leather back knives and got the horse meat and cooked it so we could eat. on them. I put the leather on the back with paste and then In March of 1944 the Germans came in and they took my on the front of it I put newspaper and on top of the newspa- father off the street and took him to a work camp. He was per there were the pieces of leather that I turned over then taken to Kispest, a suburb, to dig trenches against the cut off where the mirror was visible. Russians. He built tank traps. It was pretty awful. I used to make a pattern for a little purse that belonged in Eva and I went to live at the Jewish Community Center the handbags. I made the pattern then sewed up the piece because in August of 1944 they took all the girls. Girls were of leather or silk, turned it over and then framed the purse. taken to a stadium and from the stadium they were taken to This is how I learned pattern making. I did this for a short Poland and many of them became whores. That was the only time. Then I worked on the linings, then I worked on the way they could survive. We went to the Jewish Community outsides of the bags. I learned the trade from the bottom up. House in order to avoid that, and Mommy stayed by herself I learned everything! I could make my own pattern and I in the apartment. could then make the entire bag. A friend who lived in the Community House with us was able I used to work with Mr. Szucs. He was the master and there to get a Swiss Pass for my father, so luckily, he got out of the were several apprentices. He was the best pocket book maker Labor Camp. My friend’s uncle was working in the Swiss they had. Before the war he went to Spain for a few years, legation, and through him, we got this paper for Daddy. Our then he came back to Pessel, and much later, he came to Swiss credentials were forged. A young boy that lived in the work with us in New York. One boy who was an apprentice apartment building with us, Thomas Baroth, noticed that with me in Hungary, and became a Master as did I, many the pass was typed on an Olympia type writer, and he located years later ended up coming to America too and he worked one and added the words, ‘and family’ after my fathers name, for me. He was a very skilled pattern maker. For many years so we would all be saved. My mother got the paper and sent I made all the patterns myself, but as our business got bigger, the postman to the camp where Daddy was and got him out, he helped me with the patterns.