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| Pair of Delill quilted and plastic-covered totes. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
The Delill handbag line began as a collaboration of husband and wife team Dezso “Desire” and Lilly Rotkel. Delill is a combination of their names. Lilly was an artist and had numerous patents under her name and the Delill trademark. Their best-known designs include the classic “train case” style, gorgeous beaded purses, tapestry shoulder bags and vibrant, plastic-covered, gold lame'-trimmed totes.
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| 1944 Lilly Kertesz Rotkel design patent. Screenshot from Google Patents. |
We were delighted to connect with Lilly’s nephew Dr. Richard Merkler and his wife Frances, who shared wonderful memories of their aunt and uncle, and were kind enough to fill in some blanks. Dr. Merkler’s mother was Klara Kertesz Merkler (1913-1976), the youngest of Lilly’s eight siblings. Despite an 11-year age difference, Lilly and Klara were very close. Their parents did not emigrate to the US, so Lilly became a grandmother figure to Dr. Merkler. It was Lilly who introduced her sister Klara to her husband-to-be, George, Dr. Merkler’s father, also a doctor and dentist.
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| Delill beaded and needlepoint evening clutch with mother-of-pearl frame, made in Hong Kong. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Lilly’s husband, Dezso “Desire” Rotkel (1899-1981) was born in Budapest, Hungary and emigrated to the US in 1936. On the ship Champlain’s manifest, it lists his home address as Milan, Italy, which may explain the Italianized spelling of his Hungarian name. His occupation is “commercial director” and it says that he was joining his cousin Alex Chapo in New York. While most Eastern European Jews that emigrated during this era were referred to as “Hebrew” on ships’ manifests, Desire’s “race” is listed as “Magyar.” (According to jstor.org, first-generation Hungarian Jewish immigrants preferred to identify as Magyar.) Because of the year of his emigration, it is very possible that he was escaping the escalating violence against Jews. Per a genealogy website, Desire’s brother perished in a concentration camp, although his parents lived until the 1950s. His brother, Edouard “Ede” Rotkel, was the secretary of the Jewish Community in Brussels, Belgium and was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942. His name appears on the Bnaibrith.org document “Jews Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust.”
Desire’s first wife was Mercedes Deutsch Rotkel (1908 or 1909-?) whom he married in 1929 in Hungary. She did not accompany him on his 1936 trip to the US. It is unclear if they divorced or if their marriage was annulled, but we did find a record of a Mercedes Deutsch, b. 1908, a Holocaust survivor who lived in Milan and emigrated to Israel. Desire’s second marriage was to Lilly Schechter Kertesz (1902-1995). Lilly was born in Budapest; Shechter was her Polish father’s original surname prior to moving to Hungary. Kertesz was the surname her family took later in order to better assimilate into the Magyarország culture. According to Dr. Merkler, Lilly—who also had previously been married—was a textile designer as a young woman in Hungary. She and Desire met in Milan where there was a large community of Hungarian Jews. Dr. Merkler told us that before arriving in the US to settle permanently, the family members that emigrated had a two-year stop in Cuba. Lilly already spoke Italian, so she easily picked up Spanish while living in Cuba and, later, when Dr. Merkler was in medical school, she and Desire helped tutor him in the language. The Rotkels place and date of marriage is unknown, but Lilly was using the name Kertesz Rotkel (together, but not hyphenated) in the US as early as the 1940s, as that’s when the first trademark was issued for Delill handbags. The manifest of the ship America, sailing from Cherbourg, France to New York, says that she became a naturalized citizen in 1946 in Washington, DC and was living at 10 Downing St. in New York.
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| Elegant Delill tapestry bag with faux Damascene frame. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
When we spoke with Dr. and Mrs. Merkler, they both described Lilly as a character. She was a beautiful woman who wore very stylish clothing. She loved to wear high heels. Around age 80, when she was no longer comfortable in them, she started wearing ballerina flats and doing yoga, comporting herself with the poise of a dancer. Frances Merkler recalls that Lilly once bought her a green leather skirt. It had to be green, she said, because it would be a color that stood out. “She knew what to wear and how to wear it,” said Frances Merkler. Lilly, she said, crocheted and knit many of her own sweaters, and often commented on the lack of quality in store-bought garments.
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| Delill romantic tapestry bag with plastic chain-link handle, made in Italy. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Dezso was handsome, dignified and dapper, with an aristocratic bearing, said the Merklers. Despite this, the Rotkels didn’t flaunt their wealth. Although, said Dr. Merkler, Dezso had a 1955 white Buick Special with a black top and red leather interior that was very impressive. “I have the fondest memory of that car,” said Dr. Merkler. “It kind of stood out next to my father’s plebeian Chevrolet.”
Dr. Merkler told The Vintage Purse Museum of the time his aunt Lilly and his mother Klara went to a Russian seamstress to have ball gowns made for a Hungarian-American society event they were attending. He said his mother’s dress was very nice, but Lilly’s—in typical Lilly fashion—was over the top.
Dezso liked to tell bad jokes, and Lilly was very opinionated. They were, said the Merklers, the loves of each other’s lives.
According to The Bag Lady website, their Delill business addresses were 17 Union Square and 162 Madison Ave. The Vintage Purse Museum also found a classified ad (below) with Delill's Madison Ave. address.
Dr. Merkler, who worked for a time at Delill on his summer breaks while in high school, told us that the showroom was in the front of the building and the factory was in back. Delill also employed home crafters to do beadwork, and imported handbags from countries such as France, India, Italy and Hong Kong. Desire ran the day to day operations, while Lilly made design and employment decisions, and met with buyers from the various stores that carried Delill bags. One of Lilly’s brothers, Eugene, worked in the business in a management capacity, and his children Eva and Adam spent time working there as well.
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| 1963 Vogue magazine ad, screenshot from library archives. The "Lilly of Milan" line of Delill handbags does not appear to have lasted long. |
An ad in the September 15, 1963 edition of Vogue magazine shows that the Delill line expanded to include Lilly of Milan, a high-end brand. We’re fairly certain that the Lilly of Milan line did not last long and that, subsequently, they only used the Delill name. Interestingly, some bags are tagged with “A Delill Creation,” and others have “Delill Creations” (plural) labels. We don’t know if this was a printing error or if they simply dropped the “s.” The more contemporary bags (1980s and on) are tagged "Delill."
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| "A Delill Creation" label. Some bags were marked "Delill Creations," while others just had the Delill name. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
In 1972 Delill had a collaboration with Pierre Cardin (1922-2020) for a line of handbags featuring both names on the label. The Vintage Purse Museum discovered this was the same year that Cardin licensed his name to vehicle manufacturer AMC for use in the 1972-1973 interiors of the sporty Javelin. Cardin began licensing his name in the 1960s and was affiliated with an estimated (and whopping!) 540 companies by 1984. This led us to believe there was the possibility that Cardin could have purchased Delill in 1972. By then the Rotkels were approaching retirement age. 
Adding to this theory is that the last artistic copyright we found for Lilly Rotkel was in 1967. By the 1970s, Delill handbags for the most part were marketed as high-end, with relatively expensive (for the era) price tags. We emailed several Cardin resources and asked if Pierre Cardin had acquired exclusive rights to the Delill name, but did not hear back. After speaking with Dr. Merkler, we believe it’s unlikely that the Cardin affiliation lasted longer than its initial licensing agreement with Delill.
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Lilly designed a number of whimsical beaded coin purses, including orange slices, strawberries, flowers and slippers. 1960s orange purse from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. Copyright document found online in the "Catalog of Copyright Entries - 1967, Volume 21, Works of Art." 22 Nov 1973, Thu The High Point Enterprise (High Point, North Carolina) Newspapers.com |
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| Italian-made silver crocheted bag by Delill and two Delills with quilted, double-sided costume themes, one plastic covered. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Lilly was friendly with Judith Leiber (1921-2018), a Holocaust survivor who became a famous maker of celebrity-worn minaudieres. Dr. Merkler told us the Rotkels moved their business to 16 E. 32nd St., which is the same building in which Judith Leiber had her company; possibly how the two women met. Lilly also collaborated on a transparent plastic lunchbox-shaped handbag with Martha Turi Tauss (1918-2015), a fellow Hungarian who was a plastics artist with a factory in New York in the 1960s.
Desire died in 1981. Lilly married her second husband, Henri Choukroun (1914-2008) in 1985 in New York. Henri—also quite a character—was a former restaurateur who was clearly enamored of the vivacious Lilly. As with many New York-based handbag makers, The Roktels/Choukrouns had homes on the East Coast, as well as real estate in Florida. While some of their handbags styles look mid-century Florida-esque, the Rotkels did not make any handbags in Florida, nor was Henri ever in the purse business.
Lilly Schechter Kertesz Rotkel Choukron passed away in 1995 in Miami Beach at the age of 92, and services were held in New Jersey. Her name in the brief obituary is listed as Lilly Choukroun and there is no mention of her handbag business, husbands or survivors. We were able to confirm that Lilly, Desire and Henri are all buried at the Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, NJ.
The Delill brand was a registered trademark starting in 1948, but trademark documents state that the company first started using the Delill name in 1941. The latest newspaper advertisement we could find for Delill bags was dated 1992, which coincides with when the trademark expired. It is unclear who purchased the company after Lilly and Desire retired, but, for several decades, Delill bags continued to be produced in a high-end style that was reminiscent of the lively Lilly and her dapper Desire.
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| Large size Delill totes, one depicting scenes and writings from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the other with a jungle motif. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Special thanks to Dr. Richard Merkler and Frances Merkler. Other resources used for this article are The Bag Lady, MyHeritage, Google and Newspapers.com. Please credit The Vintage Purse Museum prior to reprinting information or using photos. This article c2021 Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum.
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| Heavily beaded and sequined Delill evening bag, made in Hong Kong. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Pair of beaded slipper coin purses. No labels, but often attributed to Delill. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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