Escada

Margaretha Ley brought both technical precision and an instinct for colour to the brand. Her background as a model gave her an unusual fluency in how garments moved and photographed, and the Escada silhouette - structured, vivid, unabashedly decorative - became a fixture in the wardrobes of European professional women through the 1980s. The company went public in 1986, with the Leys retaining 51 percent of voting stock, and by 1991 revenues had exceeded 800 million US dollars, making Escada one of the largest luxury fashion companies in Germany.

Margaretha Ley died of cancer in June 1992, aged 56. Her death marked a turning point. The company cycled through several creative directors in the decade that followed: Michael Stolzenburg from 1992 to 1994, then American designer Todd Oldham from 1995 to 1997. The mid-1990s also brought significant product expansion, with the launch of Escada Sport in 1995, the debut of an Escada Couture line, and the introduction of accessories and fragrance. The first Escada fragrance, Escada Margaretha Ley, was released in 1990 with a distinctive heart-shaped bottle. The company also held stakes in St. John Knits from 1990 and Badgley Mischka from 1992 before divesting both.

Financial difficulties accumulated through the 2000s, and in August 2009 Escada filed for insolvency at Munich Local Court after bondholders failed to approve a restructuring. Megha Mittal, daughter-in-law of Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, acquired the company out of bankruptcy and became chair of the board. Under her stewardship, the brand attempted to modernise its image while preserving the femininity and colour-saturation of the Margaretha Ley era. In November 2019, the Mittal family sold Escada to US private equity firm Regent. Escada America LLC subsequently filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2022.

At auction on the Nordic market, Escada appears primarily as vintage ready-to-wear from the 1980s and 1990s - the Margaretha Ley era that collectors most actively seek. Among 36 lots on Auctionist, the brand appears across houses including Auktionshuset Kolonn, Bishop and Miller, and Stockholms Auktionsverk Helsingborg. Pieces sold include Couture dresses, wool blazers, and accessories. The highest recorded sale in the database is a 1990s wool blazer attributed to Margaretha Ley at 1,871 SEK, with an Escada Couture dress reaching 500 EUR at Balclis. Items are catalogued almost entirely under Miscellaneous, reflecting the secondary-market positioning of fashion at Nordic auction houses.