This suit belonged to University of Washington Professor Blanche Payne (1897-1972). Payne was born in 1897 in Thayer, Kansas, and taught costume and design at the UW starting in 1927. She travelled through Central Europe and the Balkans surveying folk costume in the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Albania, and the former Yugoslavia. She collected original costumes, textiles, and embroidery samples and became a leading authority on certain folk dress and traditions. In 1965 she published History of Costume, From the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century.