Marlene Wagman-Geller

Feb 13, 2025 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

 

Never Pass into Nothingness

Judith Leiber

 

“Hitler put me in the handbag business.”—Judith Leiber  

 

The Leiber Collection (opened 2008)

446 Old Stone Highway, East Hampton, New York

 

        Nineteenth-century British poet John Keats wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” The sentiment holds true for the glittery, gorgeous minaudières (bejeweled clutch bags) created by Judith Leiber. To enter a museum that is a kaleidoscope of a love story, a slice of history, and art set amidst magnificent gardens, take the meandering road to The Leiber Collection.

Heavy handbags were never associated with the handiwork of Judith Leiber, who stated her creations were to hold only lipstick, a handkerchief, and a hundred-dollar bill—a reasonable sum for one who could afford her artistry. When asked about space for eyeglasses, keys, and other sundries, Judith’s response: “What’s an escort for?”

A high priestess of handbags started out world’s away from Springs’ serene landscape. Judith Marianne was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1921, to Emil and Helen Peto. Judith and her sister Eva played with expensive Lenci dolls their parents, souvenirs from Italian vacations. When Emil visited Austria, he brought home handbags for Helen. Her parents wanted Judith to become a chemist and emulate her Romanian aunt who had developed a complexion cream. After Miklós Horthy placed restrictions on Jews in universities, Judith left for King’s College in London. While on vacation, World War II erupted. She refused to leave her parents and sister for refuge in Britain.

Judith apprenticed at Pessl, the eminent handbag company, where she swept the floors and prepared the glue. In 1944 she became the first woman to be admitted as a master by the Hungarian Handbag Guild, which awarded her a green toolbox. The factory closed when the government deported the Jewish owners. The same year, Nazi troops collaborated with the Hungarian Arrow Cross. When the Nazis discovered Judith’s two uncles outside their home without wearing the Star of David, they dumped their corpses in the Danube. Through a friend at the Swiss Consulate, Emil obtained a Schutz pass which allowed refuge for himself, and eventually, through a machination, his family in a building under Swiss jurisdiction. (The pass is now in the U.S. Holocaust Museum.) A far different donation to the Holocaust Museum was a ticket to the 1916 coronation of Emperor Karl IV. As the Red Army closed in on Budapest, the Nazis herded the Jews from their protected houses and forced them into the Jewish ghetto. On one occasion, Helen hacked off hunks of a horse’s carcass to feed her family. To keep the horror at bay, Judith designed handbags in her head. After the war, having endured the occupation of Germany and the Soviet Union, the Petos were desperate to emigrate. En route to the U.S. Embassy, shrapnel pierced Judith’s left arm, and she feared her career was over before it had begun. A surgeon operating in a cellar saved her arm, though she was left with lifelong scars.

While peddling purses made from salvaged scraps on the bomb-riddled streets of Budapest, Judith met Sergeant Gerson (Gus) Leiber who took her to the opera. Although her mother opposed the match to a poor soldier, Gerson and Judith married in 1946 in the Petos’ home. Every day of their honeymoon, Helen phoned her daughter, imploring her to change her mind. The Leibers sailed to New York on a bride ship—a transport for soldiers and their foreign-born brides. In her hand, she clutched her green toolbox.

The Leibers rented a mouse-infested apartment in the Bronx; Judith’s culinary skills were such that smoke rose from the pan when she fried an egg. While Gerson took art classes, Judith worked for various companies. Success beckoned when First Lady Mamie Eisenhower appeared at Ike’s inaugural ball holding a Judith Leiber minaudière embellished with pearls and rhinestones. Gerson told his wife that she should “not work for those schnooks anymore,” and in 1963, they established Judith Leiber, Inc., which specialized in small bags for thick wallets. The new owner claimed her mission was to create the Rolls Royce of handbags. Though her first season was not a success because of her green leather line-customers did not care for the color- serendipity stepped in with the arrival of dented, brass minaudière from Italy. To camouflage the defect, Judith covered the bags with rhinestones, thus birthing her classic Chatelaine edition that made her the ultimate Bag Lady.

Walt Disney stated, “Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.” While Judith’s imagination did not conjure a rodent, she did create a penguin, frog, horse, and food—without the calories: a tomato, eggplant, and kiwi.

In addition to Mamie Eisenhower, other First Ladies embraced the objects d’art. Barbara Bush carried a Leiber at her husband’s inaugural ceremony. She ordered another to resemble Millie, her springer spaniel. To improve Russian relations, Barbara gifted a purse to Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of the Soviet leader. Raisa claimed it was the most breathtaking bag she had ever owned and that she would leave it to the Hermitage Museum. Nancy Reagan ordered white satin bags for both inaugural balls of her spouse. After Kitty Kelley’s biography eviscerated Nancy, Judith sent her a handbag to soften the sting. Hillary requested a model based on Socks, the Clinton cat. Lady Bird Johnson clutched the iconic clutch. Rosalyn Carter declined to do so, as she desired to project a down-to-earth-image. During the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl win, Taylor Swift carried a custom Judith Leiber company handbag that resembled a football, designed in the team’s iconic red and gold colors. A further adornment was the crystal number eighty-seven, a nod to her boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s, number.  

Hollywood likewise had a love affair with the handbags. In the 1996 Academy Awards ceremony, Christine Cavanaugh, the voice of the title character in the Oscar-nominated Babe, carried Judith’s jeweled pig minaudière (price tag: three thousand dollars). Two years later, in the film Sex and the City, when Big places numerous calls to confide in Carrie he has a case of cold feet and needed assurance, Charlotte’s daughter answered Carrie’s pink phone and dropped it into her crystal-covered cupcake minaudière. Yada, yada, Carrie was stood up at the altar.

Celebrities have also indulged in the guilty pleasure: Greta Garbo, Barbara Walters, Beverly Stills, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, Jacqueline Kennedy, Ivana Trump, and Joan Rivers. Queen Elizabeth II received one as a gift; Judith stated, “But I look and look, high and low, and I never see her carry it.” Despite her success, when Andy Warhol described her creations as works of art, she demurred, “Truthfully, I don’t consider them art. I’m an artisan.” 

When not in their respective studios, (Judith’s held her green toolbox), home for the Leibers was their seven-room retreat in East Hampton where Judith raised orchids in her greenhouse. In Manhattan, they owned an eight-room triplex on Park Avenue. Judith loved attending the Metropolitan Opera, where she paid attention to the number of Judith Leiber bags in the audience. At an event held in her honor in Bangkok, she counted 220 bags in a crowd of 250 women. She added, “And you should have seen the jewelry on them. It was the size of lollipops.” When an interviewer asked if she ever carried bags from another designer, Judith responded, “I either carry my own or a paper bag, and I won’t carry a paper bag, so you figure it out.” Trouble intruded into the handbag kingdom with the government’s ban on the use of alligator skin. Judith, who had eaten horseflesh to survive, railed against the injunction. In 2005, Judith fashioned her last handbag, a Buddha’s rhinestone encrusted hand. More than eighty Leiber masterpieces are in the collection of the Met’s Costume Institute.

When asked why they never had children, Judith explained that early in their marriage they could not afford any. Pointing to her collection, she said, “These are my children.” Her latest was a coiled snake—the serpent’s head being the bag’s clasp.  To show she had no regrets about not having procreated, she remarked of her purses, “And they never spoke a harsh word to me.” As always, Gerson was on the same page as his wife and explained that their joint progeny “hang on the walls and from arms and shoulders. As a couple we feel complete and still do.” However, they were the parents of Sterling, a Norwich terrier,

Although Judith had vowed, “I’ll work until I drop,” the Leibers sold their business in 1993 for a purported $16 to $18 million to the British firm Time Products. At age ninety-six, Gerson whispered to his wife of seventy-two years, “Sweetheart, it is time to go.” Hours later, Judith joined Gerson. The couple embodied King Solomon’s biblical words, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” Husband and wife passed away in their Springs estate.

 

The Leiber Collection

Desirous of leaving a legacy of their work, lives, and love story, Judith and Gus established, at a cost of five million dollars, The Leiber Collection, a Renaissance-style Palladian-style museum on 464 Old Stone Highway. The building lies adjacent to their Springs estate.

Visitors to the collection can feast their eyes on the Fabergé of handbags on display in glass-fronted cabinets. On the walls are Gerson’s oil and watercolor canvases. A 2000 Will Barnet portrait showcases Gerson holding a paintbrush and Judith holding her handbag. A touching tribute to the Leiber partnership is Gerson’s oil painting The Much Admired, which portrays a woman and man in a nightclub; Judith reproduced the scene on her minaudière. The museum also holds their Chinese porcelains dating back five thousand years. The museum is the venue for exhibits of hundreds of works by twentieth-century artists.

To add as many Leiber bags as possible to their brick museum, Judith scoured vintage markets, high-end consignment shops, and online auctions. Donations supplemented the inventory, including The Hollywood purse, a black clutch with silver stars that emulated the iconic mountainside sign. Opera star Beverly Sills bequeathed her two hundred purses to the collection.

The words that followed the Keats line “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” encapsulates the Leiber collection: “Its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness.”

 

A View from Her Window

When Judith gazed from the window of her museum, she saw their six Gerson-designed gardens and works of art. A notable sculpture, The Human Condition, consists of six heads with gnarled fingers gripping the neck.

 

Nearby Attraction: Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages

The museum houses the Carriage Museum that displays a collection of American horse-drawn carriages, a one-room schoolhouse, and a blacksmith shop.

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