Uncovering The Mystery

A Trunk Full of History

It all started on June 23rd 2020. I was doing a deep dive through facebook searching for potential Goyard trunks for sale. For anyone who is not aware, Goyard is a luxury French trunk and leather goods maker that was established in 1853 in Paris. Goyard is still operating today. Notable customers include Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jacques Cartier, Karl Lagerfeld, the Duchess of Windsor, and many others. If it isn’t apparent, these trunks didn’t belong to just anybody. Only the rich and/or famous could afford these trunks.

In June of 2020, I already owned one Goyard trunk and a few of their newer accessories. Since then I have acquired two more trunks; one of which is the subject of this writeup. On June 23rd 2020 I stumbled across a post from 2017 in the “Goyard Talk Worldwide” facebook group. In this post was a single photo of a Goyard wardrobe trunk that had been painted over in a hideous green.

Most Goyard trunks came finished in the classic “Goyardine” canvas. This canvas is a water resistant mixture of linen, cotton, and hemp. It features a now screen printed, but once hand painted, chevron pattern as is pictured below on a similar wardrobe trunk that was commissioned for Pablo Picasso’s wife.

So after seeing this post from 2017, I reached out to the woman from East Hampton, New York asking her if it was still for sale. She responded “yes” and we made a deal and worked out a meeting place a few weeks later. I picked it up in Philadelphia on August 2nd 2020.

The trunk was painted over on 3 sides and still had the original print showing on two sides, one of which was torn up and had the initials “A.D.A” painted on it. Most Goyard travel trunks would have the owner’s name painted on them straight from Goyard. I recognized that these were clearly the initials of the original owner, but disregarded it.

My main concern was trying to remove the green paint from the other sides. I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to recover the original print underneath the old green paint job. I reached out to a few professional trunk restorers in France and came to the conclusion that I needed to use a scalpel to carefully scrape the paint off. I went ahead and tried this method, and it actually worked! The original pattern began to arise from underneath the green paint! I am currently writing this on October 11th 2020 and I have so far managed to remove most of the paint from one panel of the trunk and I am in the middle of the next panel. The process is extremely slow and requires the precision of an archeologist, but for me it’s worth it to save the trunk. Below is a photo of my progress on the nearly complete panel. I anticipate that it will take me at least 6 months or more until I have all of the paint off of the rest of the trunk.

The restoration is only one part of my story. The other part is much more interesting. Around September 1st 2020 the thought popped into my head of “why don’t I try googling the initials on the trunk? Maybe there is a website to look up notable people by their initials...” I was correct; I found a site called peoplebyintials.com and entered in “A.D.A.” and I got a list of around 45 different names. The people on this list dated from ancient times to modern day. I went into this list with a couple things in mind. I knew that the owner was probably a woman, due to it being a wardrobe trunk. I also knew that the trunk came from the New York City area and the owner would have had to have been middle aged around the 1920s.

I went through the entire list one by one, checking Wikipedia page after Wikipedia page, and I found ONE woman who was from New York City and a notable socialite. That woman’s name was Aida De Acosta.

Aida De Acosta was an American socialite and the first woman to ever solo pilot a powered aircraft. She came from a notable family and both of her sisters were notable as well. In 1903 she was in Paris at the Sacred Heart Convent. It was there that she had been instructed by a young Brazilian, Alberto Santos-Dumont, and flew five miles while he signaled directions to her from the ground. Aida’s family back in New York did not take lightly to this news and sent her home immediately. Back in those days, media publicity for a wealthy family was not to be admired. It was certainly not typical for a woman to be doing something like that in 1903.

Aida actually kept her flight story a secret for 30 years. During WWI she sold $2,000,000 in liberty bonds. After World War I ended, Aida de Acosta traveled back to Europe to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. She went on to develop glaucoma and actually helped raise the funds to start America’s first eye institute at John Hopkins as well as America’s first eye bank. She also became director of publications and promotion for the Child Health Association. It was here that she initiated the idea of celebrating May 1 as Child Health Day. It was first proclaimed by President Coolidge in 1928.

In addition to this she was appointed head of the New York Municipal Art committee by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. She also was a former director of the Frontier Nursing Service, of the medical service division of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and of the New York committee of the National War Fund. As director of the space and advertising of the American Red Cross, she persuaded advertisers to promote the Red Cross.

In 1940, Aida was chairman of the women's division of the Associated Wilkie Clubs of America, which aided the unsuccessful Presidential campaign of Wendell L. Wilkie. As you can see, she was quite the woman! She did many other things besides what I just listed, but the list would go on for forever.

After reading all about Aida, I began to have a strong feeling that this wardrobe trunk may have been hers. She was prominent in the early 1900s, from New York City, into the arts, and had direct ties to France. A lot of these factors lead me to begin a long research process.

My first instinct was to try and find photos of Aida traveling with the trunk. I was unsuccessful in this quest and only managed to find about 5-6 photos of Aida online. My next thought was to reach out to Goyard themselves to see if they had records of a purchase from Ms. Acosta. Through extensive research I was able to obtain the email for Goyard’s head of heritage in France. I informed him of my thoughts about my trunk and sent him a photo. I asked him to please check the records to see. He got back to me a few days later and told me that they do not have her name on file. He went on to explain that this is likely because she would have purchased the trunk from Wanamaker’s department store in Manhattan. Wanamaker’s was one of the first luxury department stores in the USA. They were the only store to feature a Goyard boutique.

Wanamaker’s has long been closed and sold off to various different corporate entities. They have some archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but it would take a lifetime to sort through the 438 boxes to potentially find a sales invoice from Aida De Acosta. With this information I knew that I had to try a different method, so I reached out to the woman I purchased the trunk from.

I needed to trace back the trunk’s ownership. I asked the woman who I bought it from if she could remember who she purchased it from. The answer was yes and I was forwarded to a lovely woman named Meredith from Southampton, New York. She said that she had been using the trunk as a coffee table for about 20 years. She had originally acquired the trunk from her elderly neighbor named Frances. Frances had moved away from Southampton a long time ago and was now around 93-96 years old. Meredith didn’t really have contact with Frances, so it was up to me to do some research on the internet.

I began to research Frances online. Every single phone number online was no longer in use and I thought I hit a brick wall. That was until I stumbled across a man named Phil who was Frances’ nephew. I found the number to Phil’s business in Louisiana and left a message explaining myself. He got back to me and informed me that Frances now lives in an assisted living facility and has deteriorating memory. He told me that he would take my information about the trunk and run it by her to see what she remembers. About a week later, he informed me that she didn’t remember owning the trunk and swears it wasn’t hers. This was the unfortunate reality of the situation, with antiques this old, it’s hard for people to remember.

Now that I had exhausted almost every possible method into finding out more about the trunk, I figured there was only one thing left to do. I had to try and reach out to relatives of Aida De Acosta. Now this was no easy task, Aida died in the 1960s and all of her relatives now have different last names. I had to read through many archived newspaper articles and many family trees to finally find the names of the family members of Aida’s son Oren. I used facebook and the internet to find a young woman who I knew was of relation to Aida. I sent her an email via her workplace and waited for a response.

The response was short and brief. She confirmed her relation to Aida and told me that no one in her family would be able to confirm whether the trunk belonged to her or not.

Now this news was very sad. All this hard work led to this very blunt answer. I knew that this couldn’t be the end. I had to double check and look just a little bit deeper. I knew that Aida had some archived material in the Smithsonian through talking to the woman who wrote the childrens’ book entitled “The Flying Girl: How Aida de Acosta Learned to Soar.” I checked the Smithsonian’s website and submitted a request for someone to look into her files for me. As I write this today, October 11th, I am still waiting to hear back from them. Other than the material at the Smithsonian I didn’t really have much else to work with. That was until I took another read through of Aida’s wikipedia. How could I forget, Aida had a daughter named Alva!

I went online and searched Alva’s name. I was eventually able to find an old consensus that listed the names of Alva’s children. These children were born in the late 1930s, meaning that they were most likely still alive. I took those names and did google searches for them. Only one of the children’s names brought me to any results. The daughter of Alva, whose name I won’t disclose, is currently in her 80’s and resides on the west coast of the United States. I was able to find the contact information of a woman who knows her and sent out my kind request.

Today, October 11th 2020 I received a phone call back from the woman who knows Alva’s daughter (Aida’s granddaughter.) The first call was admittedly disparaging. The woman informed me that Aida’s granddaughter was very freaked out by the fact that I managed to contact her. To a 80 something year old woman, being approached by someone you’ve never met about your family's past must be a little weird. She made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the trunk or me contacting her. This was very unfortunate, but luckily the woman speaking to me on the phone allowed me to further explain my intentions and my story regarding the trunk. After having talked for about 10 minutes, she let me know that she would return that information to Aida’s granddaughter. About 20 minutes later I received another call from the woman. She told me that Aida’s granddaughter and the rest of the family want to leave the past in the past. Aida’s granddaughter is definitely still proud of her grandmother’s accomplishments, but I can only assume that there must have been a falling out of sorts within the family. As we all know, families aren’t perfect. The woman then told me that Aida’s granddaughter commends me for my research and that she said “YES the trunk was hers.” She provided me with only this statement and nothing more. She told me that Aida’s granddaughter requested that I no longer reach out to her regarding the trunk and that this be the end of the communication between us. She wouldn’t provide me with a signature confirmation, only that short statement. I wish that I would have been able to have a casual conversation with Aida’s granddaughter. I really do feel bad that my reaching out made this woman feel so uncomfortable and I wish her the best.

Although the signature would be the best way of officially confirming the trunk’s heritage, I hope that this detailed account of my research and journey will give me the needed credibility. Unless I find further information from the Smithsonian, this is probably the end of the road. A “yes it was hers” from Aida’s granddaughter is my best attempt at proving the heritage of this trunk. I will continue the restoration process and hopefully the trunk will return to its former condition. Maybe one day it’ll end up in an aviation museum or something.