Nancy González’s life has long been a prime example that anyone can make it to the top, to wealth, fame and fortune, provided you believe in yourself hard enough. From a backyard in Cali, Colombia, González made it into the Brought to catwalks around the world in the 1990s. Celebrities like Victoria Beckham and Blake Lively have been photographed with their exclusive handbags, and even museums have exhibited their creations. Of all things, this picture-perfect career is now ending in prison: At the beginning of the week, a court in Miami sentenced the 71-year-old to 18 months in prison. Nancy González is said to have been the head of a “conspiracy” that smuggled bags into the USA for years whose leather came from protected animals.
In fact, González is most famous for her crocodile and snakeskin creations. The skins, it was always said, came from farms specializing in the breeding of pythons or caimans. This is not forbidden, nor is international trade in it. Nevertheless, the designer would have needed special permits to import it into the USA. But she preferred to have friends, relatives or employees bring the bags into the country, declaring them as private property or as gifts. This smuggling is said to have been carried out on a large scale, over years and in hundreds of cases, each handbag worth several thousand dollars.
González was arrested in Colombia in 2022, and last year authorities extradited her to the USA, where she pleaded guilty. The designer said she made poor decisions under pressure, but she never intended to offend the United States, a country to which she is “infinitely grateful.”
Nancy González upon extradition to the USA in August 2023. Now she has been convicted.
(Photo: HANDOUT/AFP)
González was in her early 30s and newly divorced when she began sewing leather belts at her home in Colombia. Handbags were soon added and she opened her own shop. A few years later, designers in New York took notice of her, luxury boutiques put her creations in their windows, and in the 2006 film “The Devil Wears Prada” Anne Hathaway plays a naive fashion magazine assistant who is handed a handbag with the words: “Nancy González. I love it!”
González’s lawyers spoke of a woman who, as a single mother, managed to found the “first luxury high-end fashion company in a third world country, against all odds.” In any case, only a small percentage of the goods did not have proper approval. And these were mainly samples for fashion shows and other events.
But the public prosecutor’s office saw it completely differently: US officials had already pointed out to González in 2016 and 2017 that the import had not been carried out properly. Nevertheless, she continued, for her own benefit. González indulged in luxury, in complete contrast to the messengers she recruited to transport her contraband goods. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald even compared their business practices to those of drug traffickers: “It’s all driven by money.” Now the designer has to pay an unknown amount of fine in addition to the prison sentence.