By Callie O’Connor
Catalog Number: 1988.001.01
Within the La Crosse County Historical Society's Costume and Textile Collection lies a late nineteenth-century French couture gown. I discovered it during an internship in the fall of 2015. The two piece garment, which is missing its waistband and underskirt, features exquisitely hand-embroidered green silk taffeta in a style highly reminiscent of the court gowns of eighteenth century France. The couture label, stitched into the dress’s bodice, reads “Jeanne Hallée; 3, Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, Paris”.
The little known, but widely successful design house of Jeanne Hallée was popular among wealthy Americans from the 1880’s through the 1920’s. Known mostly for its fine French lingerie, Jeanne Hallée was one of the places for a wealthy and aristocratic woman to go for her wedding trousseau. However, as of yet there has been almost nothing published on Jeanne Hallée, and almost all that is left of the design house are the few surviving garments held in museums worldwide. The largest collection of Jeanne Hallée garments lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while the rest are scattered in various European and American collections, and only one known garment remains in France at the Palais Galliera, the Museum of Fashion in Paris.
So how did this rare garment end up in the Costume and Textile Collection of the La Crosse County Historical Society? The donation record of the gown listed only the donor’s name, Mrs. Grace Wurtz. Through research via local archives as well as the Internet, I discovered that she was from La Crosse but eventually moved to California. From this information I was able to locate and contact Mrs. Wurtz, now 96, and her daughter and thus hear the complete history of the dress and its donation.
The gown was made for Sara Alice Spang, the daughter of a wealthy steel and banking family in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The family had strong European connections, spending a great deal of time abroad. Sara eventually met and married a British man, Alfred Frederick Joseph Sang, whom she met in an alphabetized French conversation class: Mr. Sang and Miss Spang were seated next to each other. The two married in London in February 1899. The dress itself can be dated to within a year of their marriage, and was most likely part of her wedding trousseau. The couple lived alternately in France and Pennsylvania, and had three children before Alfred Sang died in service in France during the First World War. The dress was passed down from Sara to her daughter Elizabeth Sang and then to her daughter-in-law, Grace Sang, later Grace Wurtz, who grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Grace, recognizing the significance of the dress, donated it in 1988 to the La Crosse County Historical Society which had been growing its textile collection at the time.
Discovered again in the collection after more than 20 years, the gown is now serving a new purpose. I chose to research the mystery of the forgotten designer Jeanne Hallée for my History Research Seminar, at UWL. Since graduation, I am moving forward with research to publish the first chronological account of the design house’s history and its contribution to the Haute Couture industry.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on October 22, 2016.
This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.
