We do not know who wore this dress as it was donated by The Thrift Shop in Washington, D.C. This charity shop had received the dress, along with some other items, through an anonymous donation. They believed the clothing belonged in a museum. The style of the dress and its label are particularly interesting. Ch. Drecoll was a fashionable Paris Fashion House from 1900 to about 1929. It began as a dressmaking establishment in Vienna, Austria, owned by Baron Christophe Drecoll, a Belgian. In 1900 his designer, Mme. Besancon de Wagner and her husband, the shop's business manager, purchased the business and the right to use the name in Paris. They moved the business to Paris. After World War II, their daughter-in-law, Mme. Pierre Besacon de Wagner, better known as Maggy Rouff, started designing for them. She assumed control of the company by the late 1920s. In 1929 she began designing under her own name and became one of the leading designers in the 1930s and 1940s. Exhibited in the Hall of American Costume from 1964 to 1973.
