Working her way up through the Palm Beach circuit of small designer shops to the floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, Marks used a combination of high taste levels, pluck and drive to transform herself from a housewife dabbling in bag creation to the head of a miniature luxury brand that is second to none in the richness of its offerings. “I’m very persistent, I’m very positive and I’m very friendly,” says Marks of her path to success – a path that not only began with a royal audience, but perhaps found its highpoint with one too.

Some years ago, Marks met Lucia Flecha de Lima, a mother figure to Diana Spencer, the late Princess of Wales. “We clicked right away and sometime later she asked if I would be interested in designing a handbag for Diana. Of course I was. It was an extraordinary invitation that changed my life.”

Marks reviewed the history of the great, iconic handbags – the Birkins, the Chanels – eventually realizing that Diana’s bag, “needed to be regal, fashionable and something that would survive through the ages.” Settling on an elongated body with a triple gusset and a signature contour, Marks sent her creation to the Princess and awaited a reply. “I was told that when she got it she said, ‘it’s long and slim, just like me,’” a ringing endorsement backed by Diana’s eventual purchase of 15 of the now highly sought-after handbags.

Since then, Marks has continued to expand her brand, its thriving base of fans and her ability to provide exciting new mixes of color and texture to the market. “We’re producing extraordinary finishes and marbled colors. Pretty soon,” she says, reviewing her company’s unsurpassed ability to combine exotic materials with eye-catching style, “we’ll be able to take an alligator skin and simulate almost any surface on it. You’ll see finishes and mixtures of colors that technology simply doesn’t permit us to do right now.”

For someone who has always prided herself on demanding and achieving the best for herself and her admirers, Marks is constantly concerned with her next step and the ability of each of her creations to survive the caprices of fashion. “I try to incorporate current trends into the designs in a subtle way that won’t leave the buyer stuck once they die down,” she says of her ability to survive the changes in the market. “For instance, my contoured clutch, the Femme Fatale, has a very trendy gathered alligator ruffle underneath that’s attached with Velcro so it can survive the fad.”

Even as she opens her newest location in Bellagio – “the number one retail site in the United States,” according to this boutique shopping veteran – Marks continues to demonstrate how her singular taste and inability to accept anything less than her dreams of the perfect purse have helped her and her creations survive in style.