Hi everyone! I am a grad student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and I'm doing a project on two British couturiers who worked during the first part of the 20th century: Elspeth Phelps and Elspeth Champcommunal. Does anyone know if any extant garments exist? I have found a few examples that were sold at auction, but none in museum collections except when Champco was at Worth. Let me know! Here is a small background on them if you don't know who they were: Elspeth Phelps worked for Ada Nettleship and Sarah Fullerton Monteith Young before opening her own couture house in London around 1906. From 1923-1925 she worked for Paquin London as the head designer and closed her house. In 1926 she reopened her house under her married name, Elspeth Fox-Pitt. She sold the house in the late 1940s, and presumably retired. She died in 1968. Elspeth Champcommunal was born in Britain but opened a couture house, Champcommunal, in Paris in 1926. She closed her house in 1933 or '34 and moved back to London, where she became head designer at W. W. Reville-Terry. Reville-Terry took over the London house of Worth in 1936 and Champco stayed on as head designer. She designed for Worth London until at least 1953, possibly later. She died in 1976.
You could try contacting Daniel Milford-Cottam - he is a factory cataloguer at the V&A. I think he would know where to point you in regards to those designers. If you do a search on his name you will find a few places where you can contact him - facebook, Linked In, the V&A etc.
