Judith Leiber

A Leiber minaudière is an evening purse built on a metal shell that is often encrusted with Swarovski crystals and plated in silver or gold, with every crystal hand-set onto a sculpted form. That labour, plus the rarity and collectible status the bags have earned, is what carries the price. The most ornate animal-shaped pieces have run past US$7,000, and the bags have long been treated as a status symbol.

If you want a special-occasion piece that doubles as a small sculpture, it earns its keep. These are not everyday totes but jewel-like evening bags meant for galas, weddings and black-tie nights, and they have a reputation for holding their value. The Luxury Institute rated Leiber the most prestigious luxury handbag brand two years running, which tells you where it sits.

The crystal minaudière, full stop. Founder Judith Leiber built her name on these whimsical crystal-covered evening purses shaped like baby pigs, watermelon slices, cupcakes, peacocks, penguins and snakes. Animals are a recurring theme, and the most expensive bags in the collection are usually the animal-shaped ones.

Start with a shape that genuinely delights you, because the joy of these pieces is in the figurative designs. A crystal classic in a colour you'll reach for again reads as more versatile, while a novelty shape like the cupcake or the peacock makes a real statement. Either way you're buying an occasion piece, so pick the one you can already picture carrying.

The brand's own boutiques are deliberately few, with only four in the world. Beyond those, the collection is carried at selected luxury retailers including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Lane Crawford and Holt Renfrew, so a department-store counter or the official site is the most reliable route.

Very much so. Some wealthy collectors have amassed them by the hundred, and one New Orleans arts patron, Bernice Norman, owns close to 300 Leiber bags. Examples sit in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is rare company for a handbag.

The brand was founded in 1963 by Judith Leiber, a Hungarian-American designer born Judit Pető in Budapest in 1921. She had trained in handbag-making in Hungary, becoming the first woman to join the Hungarian Handbag Guild, before moving to New York in 1947 and eventually starting her own house.

In Hungary she landed a traineeship at a handbag company, where she learned to cut and mould leather, make patterns, and frame and stitch bags. She rose to become the first woman graduated to master craftswoman and the first woman in the Hungarian Handbag Guild in Budapest, an apprenticeship that shaped the precision of everything she later made.

Several American First Ladies have, in fact received them as gifts from the designer herself, from Mamie Eisenhower to Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton. That association helped cement the minaudière as an evening status symbol among well-dressed women.

No. Judith Leiber retired in 1998 and died in 2018, so the brand carries her name and continues her crystal-minaudière tradition under new creative direction rather than by her own hand. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers in 1994 in recognition of that body of work.

Treat it like the small jewel it is. Store it in its box away from knocks so the hand-set crystals stay seated, avoid moisture and perfume on the surface, and lift rather than drag it across hard tables. Gentle handling keeps both the crystals and the plated metal shell looking their best for years.