It’s a long way from East London to the exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
But that is the impressive journey made by Lana Marks, the high-powered businesswoman nominated by President Donald Trump this week as the new United States ambassador to South Africa.
Born Lana Bank in 1953, the former East London resident is best known for her exotic leather handbags that have been toted by the likes of Dame Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron and Princess Diana.
This week Marks, 65, faced a flurry of well wishes – and a fair share of fierce criticism – after Trump’s announcement that he had nominated her as the US Ambassador to South Africa.
She was derided by social media users on two fronts – her reported lack of diplomatic experience – and for the fact she is a member of Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where she now lives.
But Marks is fairly used to criticism – her own siblings have accused her of misappropriating the family wealth and have launched court proceeedings against her in the Eastern Cape.
Marks, who reportedly can speak isiXhosa and
Afrikaans and is a keen tennis player, is an alumna of Clarendon School for Girls in East London.
She started her handbag company, Lana Marks, when inspiration hit while shopping for a swish affair in honour of the queen of England’s birthday.
She now has stores in Palm Beach, New York, Beverly Hills and Dubai.
Her business started, as she explains on her website, after a handbag disaster in 1984.
It was the queen’s birthday and she and husband, psychiatrist Neville, had been invited aboard the royal yacht Britannia, docked in Bermuda where they lived at the time, to celebrate the occasion.
And Marks wanted a red alligator handbag to match her red and purple suit.
Before the party, while in Palm Beach, she “looked at all the collections up and down Worth Avenue but could not find anything in my taste level in very high-end handbags”.
“I realised if I was looking there might be other people looking for fabulous colours and fabulous handbags in fine exotic leathers,” she said.
And so the business was born but only after she had to hide the less than fabulous bag she ended up taking to the event “behind my back in all the photographs”.
Her bags now retail for between R9,500 and R50,000, while the iconic Cleopatra Clutch will set you back R1m.
Marks has given several interviews over the years in which she speaks of her friendship with the late Princess Diana, after whom she named a handbag range.
In those interviews Marks tells of the plans she had with Diana in the week she died in a Paris tunnel in August 1997, plans Marks had to unexpectedly cancel.
Marks said she and Diana were due to holiday in Italy when Marks had to cancel as her father had a heart attack, leaving Diana to instead take the ill-fated trip with Dodi Fayed.
Closer to her place of birth, Marks story is also somewhat sorrowful as she is caught up in a bitter battle with her siblings who are suing her in the Grahamstown High Court.
Brother Malcolm Bank and sister Anne Pogroske accuse her of transferring their parents’ apartment in Trump Plaza in Florida, in the US, into her name without their knowing.
They say the apartment is valued at more than $1m (about R14m). They also claim she “unlawfully” transferred almost R2.7m from the family trust into her bank account in 2013.
In an interview last month, Marks rubbished the claims.
Years ago in Bermuda, Marks and her husband were convicted of breaking Bermudan immigration laws in June 1982, for hiring a South African nanny illegally.
The conviction was overturned on appeal the following year but the Bermudan immigration department refused to renew Neville’s work permit and the family was forced to leave the island in 1985, local newspaper reports say.
When asked for an interview this week, a representative for Marks said: “We're unable to take press inquiries at this time, but can offer the following quote which you can attribute to Lana Marks: ‘I'm deeply honoured’."
Social media users were out in their numbers talking about the nomination.
Twitter user Adelle Wapnick wrote: “The world has gone to hell in a handbag.”
Bertha Jean Brodnax believed she was in with a chance for an ambassadorial post too, tweeting: “I can crochet a badass blanket. I would like to be ambassador to Scotland please.”