Background
Lea Lenke Roth (later Gottlieb) was born in Sajószentpéter, Hungary.
Lea Lenke Roth (later Gottlieb) was born in Sajószentpéter, Hungary.
She immigrated to Israel from Hungary after World World War II, and founded the Gottex company. Before World World War II began, she was planning to study chemistry. At checkpoints, she hid her head in a bouquet of flowers to avoid being recognized as a Jew.
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."
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 Israeli brand outside of Israel, exporting 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 attractive beach outfits for having fun at luxury beaches, 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.
Stitching was known to be meticulous, the prints magnificent and varied.
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. By 1984, Gottex had sales of $40 million ($91 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.
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. The company"s 1984 strapless one-piece swimsuit became the most widely sold style in the world.
In 1991, almost half of the company"s $60 million business was in the United States.
Lev Leviev, the owner of the Africa-Israel Group, acquired Gottex in 1997. After about a year heading the design team, Gottlieb left the company. Once her non-compete agreement with Gottex expired, at the age of 85 she founded a new swimwear design company, under her own name.
Gottlieb died at her home in Tel Aviv on November 12, 2012 at the age of 94.