"I gratefully accept the offer without even having seen the dress..." was Lady de Jonge's written reply to Miss Verploegh, who offered this dress to the museum in 1937. Carla de Jonge had unknowingly accepted a particularly special dress. To this day it is one of the oldest signed dresses in the museum collection. It became more common for dresses to be signed by the creator, a trend set by Charles Frederick Worth, from the early 1860's. This dress was made by Marie Josephine Divoire-Bawin (1824-1883), a couturiere with a studio on Hofbergstraat 20 in Brussels, where the fashion house was situated from 1862-1907. The fashion house had an important Dutch clientele, particularly between 1870-1880, including Lady Henriette van de Poll. Another dress worn by this lady-in-waiting to queen Emma, was bought by Divoire-Bawin and is kept in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.