The Florida resident and Mar-a-Lago member claims she was a close personal friend of Princess Diana and has no political experience.

The White House has announced its nominee to be the next ambassador to South Africa: handbag designer Lana Marks. View this photo on Instagram Instagram: @lanamarkshandbags

In the announcement, the administration noted Marks, a native of South Africa who now lives in Florida, “speaks Afrikaans and Xhosa.” She also “served on the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Women’s International Forum for more than a decade,” the administration said. Marks is the founder and CEO of her eponymous luxury handbag company, which sells handbags that retail up to $20,000. Her bags are made from ostrich and alligator, among other materials.

What led Marks to start a handbag company? I’m glad you asked! View this photo on Instagram instagram.com

Here it is, straight from her website: The idea for a luxury exotic leather fashion brand came in 1984, when Lana Marks and her husband were invited to a birthday celebration for Queen Elizabeth II aboard the royal yacht Britannia.



A fruitless search for a red alligator handbag to match her suit led Marks to conclude that a niche existed in the marketplace for luxury, exotic leather fashion handbags in fabulous colors.

The 300-person wedding included “pyrotechnics, two cocktail receptions, a six-tiered wedding cake in six different hues and an ice sculpture inlaid with the Tiffany-blue initials of the new couple — all orchestrated by the detail-conscious mother of the bride,” the newspaper reported.

Here’s some more info about Marks I got from her Instagram account. She was friends with Princess Diana and often posts in remembrance of her. View this photo on Instagram Instagram: @lanamarkshandbags

In fact, Hello! magazine even called her Diana’s “best friend” in a story about a charity auction Marks held for a bag she named after the princess. Marks also appeared in The Last 100 Days of Diana special earlier this year.

In fact, Marks has said she wonders if she could have saved Diana, as she claims the two were supposed to be on a trip together when the princess was killed. View this photo on Instagram Instagram: @lanamarkshandbags

Marks told the Sun she had to cancel their planned trip because Marks’s father had died. Diana went to Paris instead, and was killed in a car crash. “For a few years I was in shock. I still feel the pain of it all,” Marks told the newspaper in 2017. “I constantly think, ‘What if she’d been with me?’ All that might not have happened.” Marks has said her father died just two days before the trip was planned. However, the Palm Beach Post reported Marks’s father actually died five weeks prior.

The newspaper also reported that Marks has faced legal trouble in Florida, where she has lived since 1987. View this photo on Instagram Instagram: @lanamarkshandbags

According to the Palm Beach Post, Marks was evicted from her office in 2015 after failing to pay almost $26,000 in rent. She also has faced lawsuits in recent years for failing to pay $117,342 for ads in magazines and failing to pay contractors in Aspen, Colorado. She and her husband also got a tax lien for $360,641 in back taxes, which, according to the newspaper, they paid off in 2017.

When Trump’s nomination of Marks was announced, some people were confused. @CNNPolitics A handbag designer and Mar-A-Lago member? Does she have experience, a degree, or fluent in a couple of languages? So many good intellectuals and politicians out there and he decided to lower the bar even more? Hum

Although some were not surprised. @CNNPolitics This should not be a shock as he also picked another unexperienced handbag designer as a senior advisor. Cc: @IvankaTrump

“So her experience of picking out colors & fabrics for handbags has prepared her to find solutions to issues that affect the wellbeing of millions of people?” asked one person. Lana Marks, a handbag designer has been chosen by Trump to be the UN Embassador to South Africa. So her experience of picking out colors & fabrics for handbags has prepared her to find solutions to issues that affect the wellbeing of millions of people???https://t.co/QDLT1rN9gf