Special Post: Mahler Belts and Bags - With Input From the Daughter of The Founder

Mahler of California leather handbag with mandala-style fabric applique. Founder Irving Mahler's daughter Marcey told us this was her father's homage to Emilio Pucci (1914-1992), a designer that was popular in the 1960s, and whose design house remains high fashion today. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

Mahler of California Belts and Bags

We planned to write an article about California handbag makers, showcasing a number of them together. We're still working on it, but decided to do a separate piece solely about Mahler Belts & Bags after we connected with the gregarious Marcey Mahler, who graciously shared her father Irving Mahler's story.

We also gathered information for this article from our usual resources, including newspaper archives, genealogy websites, and trade publications (via Google Books and the Internet Archive). 

Mahler California imprint. Note the belt-shaped M. From one of the Mahler bags in the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

Irving Mahler was born in Austria in 1904 to Adolph "Aaron" Mahler (1871-1963) and Malka "Mollie" Kraus Mahler (1874-1937). The Mahlers emigrated to New York around 1912, when Irving, one of six children, was eight years old. Marcey Mahler told us that there was some confusion surrounding their original last name, Fuchs, when the family entered the US, as Adolph spoke limited English. So when he was asked for his surname, he instead answered with his occupation, "mahler," which means "painter" in German.

While immigrant families' descendants have often assumed that surname changes happened during the US port entrance process, historians now say that this did not occur, and that names were taken directly from ships' manifests. In the case of the Mahlers, one could theorize that the change could have arisen not only due to Adolph Mahler's language barrier, but a transposition of the "name" and "occupation" categories on the manifest of the ship upon which they arrived.

Adolph was employed as a house painter in New York for a number of years until he eventually worked at a store. Marcey vaguely remembers from family lore that it may have been a dry cleaning business. The 1940 US Census shows Adolph as an assistant manager in an industry we can't make out because the writing is illegible. (We can assume that he Americanized the name Adolph to Aaron during this period for obvious reasons.) 

The 1940 US Census also shows that Irving and one of his brothers were working in the belt business. Marcey recalls that their employer was Mo Gross, and we did find a Gross Belt & Novelty Co. operating in this time frame, but we don't know if this was Mo Gross's firm.

Model wearing a Mahler belt. September 21, 1955, The Los Angeles Times, clipped via Newspapers.com.

Irving married Florence Altschuler Mahler (1910-1968) in New York. They had two children, Howard and Marcey. Howard was born in New York, and Marcey in California. They relocated for the same reason many East Coasters move to the West Coast: the weather! Marcey told us that her father had taken a trip during a bitterly cold New York winter to visit cousins in California, then came home and told her mother that they were moving to Los Angeles.

Irving Mahler started working for a California belt company, eventually purchasing it. The business name Mahler Belts of California, Inc. was filed in 1952 (per a California business entity search), and was located (per a 1952 California business directory) at 1601 S. Broadway in Los Angeles with 15 employees. 

It appears to have been established a bit earlier than 1952, as we found a 1951 reference to "Mahler belts & bags" in the trade publication California Stylist. This also indicates that Irving Mahler was already making handbags, even though his bread and butter was, at that time, belts. 

A 1953 issue of California Stylist reported that "Irving Mahler (Mahler Belts) and Irving Chernuchin (Arrow Belts) will serve on the board of directors of the group which recently became affiliated with the California Sportswear & Dress Association." (Slight error in the publication: The owner of Prince Mfg. Co., the leather goods company that made Arrow belts, was Israel Chernuchin, 1919-1973.)

Mahler leather bag with wood scrollwork. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

July 15, 1970, The Press Democrat, clipped via Newspapers.com.

Marcey Mahler told us that, early on, her father had a manufacturing facility and showroom in the Cooper Building (now known as the Cooper Design Space) at 860 S. Los Angeles St., in what would become known as the Fashion District. This building was, said Marcey, "catty-corner" to the California Mart (nicknamed "Cal Mart," and also known as the California Market Center). 

A 1961 classified ad we found in La Opinion, a Spanish language newspaper, said that Mahler Belts' address was 757 S. Los Angeles St.

Among Irving Mahler's collaborators was famous fashion designer Richard Blackwell (1922-2008), but their business relationship ended due to a financial dispute.

Irving Mahler, said Marcey, was an innovator who often looked at ways to diversify his brand. Inspired by the 1959 Annette Funicello song "First Name Initial," he expanded the business to include initial necklaces. He also invented the "PermaClip," which attached to the inside of Mahler belts to keep them from separating from skirts and pants.

April 14, 1962, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, clipped via subscription to Newspapers.com.

The addition of leather handbags to Mahler Belts of California, Inc. came, said Marcey, because of a singular fashion style—one which her father absolutely despised—the "chemise," a somewhat shapeless dress that was not meant to be worn with a belt. This trend caused a significant decrease in belt sales.  

It seems Irving Mahler was not alone in his distaste for the chemise, as we found the following snippet from the November 1957 issue of the trade publication Kiplinger's Personal Finance, which dryly reported: "Paris designers are promoting the 'chemise dress.' A chemise dress, men, is a gunny sack that has traveled abroad."

The chemise dress, inadvertent saboteur of the belt business. March 27, 1958, the Arizona Republic, clipped via subscription to Newspapers.com.

Thus the company had a name change to Mahler Bag & Belt., Inc. The business grew, and, in 1966, Irving Mahler leased an 18,400 sq. ft. office and showroom at 1044 S. Hope St. (This address is now a parking lot.) 

Mahler leather and raffia handbag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

April 23, 1972, The Tuscaloosa News, clipped via Oldnews.com.

Marcey told us that her father was the first designer to use top grain leather along with contrasting white stitching on handbags. She also said that he was among the first to install a conveyor belt on the production line in his factory.

Mahler leather bag with contrast stitching, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

September 22, 1968, the Lubbock Avalanche, clipped via subscription to Newspapers.com.

When Marcey was a teen, she worked at the showroom with her father, who would ask her opinion on his bag designs. She would also show them to her classmates to get their thoughts on the bags, and let her father know which ones they liked.

September 11, 1966, the Arizona Republic, clipped via Newspapers.com.

In the mid-1970s, the company, which by then had changed its name to Mahler Sales Co., Inc., created the Slam belt and bag line, meant for a younger market, with the ad below showing a groovy Rolling Stones-like lips logo and '70s-does-'20s deco-style art. Marcey told us that the name "Slam" represented the initials of some of Irving Mahler's grandchildren.

July 1976 advertisement for Slam belts and bags in the trade publication Handbags and Accessories, clipped via Internet Archive.

Marcey remembers her father importing his inventory and components at the outset, but, like many handbag makers of the 1960s-1970s, Mahler Sales began bringing in even more products from Asia, including acrylic box bags. This was more than likely due to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its dramatic effects on the handbag industry, which made it less expensive to import bags rather than make them in-house.

In December 1975, Mahler Sales Co. Inc. donated 86,000 belt buckles to the Braille Institute Thrift Shop in Los Angeles. Its manager, Marjorie Morris, decided to turn them into Christmas ornaments, with the help of student volunteers from local schools. So if you have an unusual Christmas ornament that looks something like a belt buckle among your collection of vintage holiday decor, it could very well be a Mahler piece!

Eventually, Marcey's brother Howard took over Mahler Sales and ran it for several years, until 1985, when the company closed its doors. We found a newspaper notice of liquidation of "Mahler Belt & Sales Co." by auction house Fred Bush and Associates that listed substantial assets, including machinery, to be sold August 27, 1985.

Irving's wife Florence, Marcey's mother, passed away at age 58 in 1968 from breast cancer, which she had survived for ten years, beating the odds at that time. Irving Mahler passed away in his home at the age of 89 in 1994. His son Howard passed in 2014. 

The spirit of Irving Mahler continues with his legacy of well-made handbags, which not only endured over decades, but are roomy enough to hold everything we need.

"My father was very smart," said Marcey. "He was a visionary." The Vintage Purse Museum heartily agrees.

Special thanks to the Marcey Mahler. Resources used were Newspapers.com, Oldnews.com, and MyHeritage.com, to which we have paid subscriptions. Other resources were Internet Archive, FamilySearch.com, and Google. Please do not use photos or information from our website without requesting permission, vintagepursemuseum@gmail.com.