Trump’s Pick for Ambassador to South Africa Is a Mar-a-Lago Member Who Loves Alligator Handbags

Despite his penchant for misogynistic comments, President Trump is happy to elevate some women—especially if they are his kin (Ivanka Trump) or if they happen to be members of his gilded South Florida country club Mar-a-Lago. Such is the case for Trump’s expected nominee to be U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Lana Marks, a designer of diamond-encrusted and alligator-skin handbags and a former friend to Princess Diana. It is being noted that Marks, who has no prior diplomatic experience, is at least the fourth Mar-a-Lago member that Trump has tapped for an ambassadorship—raising questions, as The Palm Beach Post wrote, “about whether Trump is doling out favors to those who can afford Mar-a-Lago’s $200,000 membership fee.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Marks, who was born in East London, South Africa, will serve as ambassador to a country which she has not lived in for more than 40 years. She now resides in Palm Beach, which she has described in not-so-populist terms. “It’s the most exclusive part of the U.S.,” Marks reportedly told South Africa’s Business Live. “It’s a small enclave, an island north of Miami. One third of the world’s wealth passes through Palm Beach in season. The crème de la crème of the world lives there.” Marks’s daughter's 2010 wedding—held at Mar-a-Lago—featured “pyrotechnics, two cocktail receptions, a six-tiered wedding cake in six different hues, and an ice sculpture inlaid with the initials of the new couple,” according to the Palm Beach Daily News.

If you’re getting the sense that Marks may give Louise Linton a run for her money, you might be right. Marks is unapologetically lavish: Her eponymous handbags—with some price tags at $400,000—have been clutched by the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Kate Winslet, and even Helen Mirren at the 2007 Oscars (the year she won for The Queen), who was pictured carrying a $250,000 Champagne-color purse inspired by a royal tiara and bedazzled with 776 diamonds. “To be called the most extravagant handbag for the Oscars is really the ultimate compliment,” Marks said.

Back in Washington, D.C., the White House touts Marks’s official qualifications, noting she is the CEO of her company; has served on the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Women’s International Forum; attended the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg; and speaks Afrikaans and Xhosa. But her adopted hometown paper, The Palm Beach Post again, says that “like Trump, [she] is a relentless self-promoter, protector of her brand, and teller of fantastic tales of wealth and privilege.”

For one, there’s the origin story for her handbag company: “We were invited onto the Queen of England’s yacht Brittania to celebrate her birthday party,” Marks said. “I had this wonderful red and purple suit, and we were coming to Palm Beach the weekend before, and I said to my husband, ‘I would love a red American alligator handbag.’” Tragically unable to find one, Marks had an epiphany: “there might be other people out there looking for . . . fabulous fashion handbags in vivid exotic leathers.” Marks, a former ballerina, has claimed to have played tennis in “Wimbledon, the French, and South African Open,” according to The Guardian, but a 2006 report in the South African Business Day was unable to find any record of Marks participating in the French Open, for one.

Marks has also been exceedingly vocal about her friendship with Princess Diana, whom she met when she designed an alligator-skin purse for her in 1995. Marks has claimed that the week Diana died in Paris in 1997, she was supposed to have been on holiday with Marks in Lake Como, Italy—a trip that was canceled at the last minute when Marks’s father died suddenly in South Africa. “For the next few years, I was in shock. I still feel the pain of it all,” Marks told The Sun last year. “I constantly think, ‘What if she’d been with me?’ All that might not have happened.”

The Post also notes that, like Trump, Marks has been embroiled in various legal disputes, including being sued by her Worth Avenue (the Rodeo Drive of Palm Beach) landlords in 2004, 2007, and 2009 for allegedly failing to pay rent (the cases were settled). A Ft. Lauderdale law firm accused her in 2007 of dodging legal fees, and in 2015, The Palm Beach Post reports she “was evicted from her office on Worth Avenue for failing to pay $25,399 in rent and other expenses.”

If Marks is confirmed, she has her work cut out for her, after the president has inaccurately tweeted about white farmers being mass-murdered in South Africa and referred to some African nations as “shithole countries.” You know what they say: Nothing says diplomacy like a fabulous handbag in vivid exotic leathers.