Does anyone know anything about Gothe New York??

NByers

NByers

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I came across a 1950s formal dress with the label Gothe New York...I am trying to find out anything I can about the designer/brand but am not finding much...does anyone know anything about the history of this designer?? Any info is helpful! Are these dresses rare??
 
From a 1966 obit for David E. Gothe: "David E. Gothe, retired president of the dress-manufacturing company bearing his name, died Tuesday...in his (Queens home). He was 69 years old. Mr. Gothe, also a fashion stylist, helped design many of his company's dresses, although its head designer was his wife, Mrs. Irene Zerner Gothe. Among their dresses was the evening gown worn by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt at the President's third inauguration on Jan. 20, 1941. The gown is now on view at the Smithsonian Institution..."
 
Here are a few pictures of the dress (I took them very quickly so they are not so good) What do you think??
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I started looking into this for a blog, but there isn't much written about him. Lynn's links are great but the content of the articles are lean. Also, I can't find any evidence of him supplying the inaugural ballgown to Eleanor Roosevelt. All four of her dresses seem to come from the dressmaking department of Arnold Constable in New York. A period description: NEW YORK CITY -- Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt will appear in this rose white satin gown at the events climaxing the ceremonies of the third inauguration of President Roosevelt, Jan. 20. The First Lady is shown as she had final fittings on three gowns she will wear during the day, all purchased at the Arnold Constable store on Fifth Avenue. The "inaugural gown" shown here has the new 1941 fluid shoulders with petal sleeves, with outline decorations of seed pearls. It has a sweeping train. (Jan. 3, 1941)
 
Jonathan said:
Also, I can't find any evidence of him supplying the inaugural ballgown to Eleanor Roosevelt. All four of her dresses seem to come from the dressmaking department of Arnold Constable in New York... The First Lady is shown as she had final fittings on three gowns she will wear during the day, all purchased at the Arnold Constable store on Fifth Avenue.
Click to expand...

Jonathan, could she have purchased a David E. Gottlieb gown from Arnold Constable? I will see if I can find any additional information on her gown.
 
I wondered that... it sounds like Gothe was a manufacturer and Gottlieb a stylist for the clothes, among others. Constable might have sold Gothe dresses, and Roosevelt may have bought more than one gown for the inaugural day - one article said she bought three but all from Constables. Sometimes designers over-exaggerate their histories too...
 
It's been very difficult to find any information...it makes it hard to know what the value of a dress like this would be, or what it could sell for...
 
Of first note is the fact that David Gothe is David Gottlieb. He apparently changed his name at some point. See references below.

Re the Roosevelt gown question, I have not had too much time to dig, but I found a 1964 article about a late-in-life David Gottlieb/Gothe venture in the Poconos: "FRANKLIN HILL--David Gothe has designed dresses for a lot of important people. In fact, three of his dresses have a permanent place in the Smithsonian Institution., but he is now catering to his biggest customer--840 acres of customer--the New York World's Fair. Instead of the silks and laces and beaded embroidery for which he became famous, the raw material in this case consists of 85,000 cubic yards of Pocono peat humus in which the flowers, lawns, shrubs, and trees of the New York World's Fair are growing. Gothe has designed clothes for many famous women, probably the most famous being the late Eleanor Roosevelt. She wore Gothe dresses at all three of the Inaugural Balls which followed the inaugurations of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as President of the United States. It is those gowns which hang in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Gothe also designed gowns for the novelist Fannie Hurst and Ivy Baker Priest while she was Treasurer of the United States. Both of them have been guests at his home at Little Pond Farm on Franklin Hill."

Here is a post from his alleged grandson...

GotheRooseveltGrandsonSm.jpg
 
Well this is all very odd... I am guessing that he must have sold dresses through Arnold Constable. The Smithsonian doesn't mention his name in relation to the Roosevelt dresses, nor Mamie Eisenhower. What makes me wonder even more is that his grandson says he made dresses for the Queen of England, which can not be true, unless something was presented to the Queen Mother when she was visiting the U.S. in 1939, but clothing is a weird presentation gift at the time.
 
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