Venetian handbag designer Giuliana Coen Camerino dies at age 90

Giuliana di Camerino, a native of Venice, got into the luxury goods business in a very particular way : through dire necessity.

A Jew, she was forced to escape from Italy in November 1943 via rail to Lugano, Switzerland. They had no income, and so Mrs. Camerino began to sew and managed to make herself a leather satchel. A woman on the street liked it enough to buy it on the spot.

''In this moment, people knew we needed to have money,'' Mrs. Camerino said. Soon after this sale, a local leather goods store hired her to make bags.

Following the war, she returned to Venice to start her business, naming it Roberta di Camerino after the 1933 musical ''Roberta.''