I finally got around to cracking open one of my most prized fashion possessions — Black Designers in American Fashion a collection edited by Elizabeth Way. Elizabeth Way is an Associate Curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and a fashion historian focusing on Black American style.
Way’s book — which is comprised of many knowledgeable fashion and culture historians, authors, scholars, etc. — highlights the often ignored (and actively suppressed) contributions of Black designers, dressmakers, and sewists from the early 18th century to modern day by compiling everything from runaway slave flyers, newspaper advertisements, and clothing tags to prove that Black Americans have always been a central part of and vital to expanding the American fashion system.
By the second line of the book’s introduction, I had a question that needed to be answered as soon as possible — why have I never heard of the Black Fashion Museum?
Naturally, I finished reading Way’s introduction and took my question to Google, only to be met with the sparsest Wikipedia page I have ever seen.
The Foremother
Through my research, I have found that the Black Fashion Museum was a gift from our foremother Lois K. Alexander-Lane chronicling the craftsmanship, stories, and impeccable style of the creatresses of Black American fashion.
Lois K. Alexander-Lane founded the Black Fashion Museum in 1979. Born Lois Marie Kindle in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1916, she adored fashion from a young age. Sketching dress designs she viewed in boutique store windows, Alexander-Lane always possessed the heart of a designer. She would buy fabrics from the Five and Dime store and make garments for her mother, sisters, and dolls.
Alexander-Lane would graduate from what is now Hampton University in Virginia and then move to the capital. In Washington, D.C. where she would spend more than thirty years of her life, Alexander-Lane would open The Needle Nook boutique and work as a federal employee for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Eventually, Alexander-Lane sought a master’s degree in Retailing, Fashion, and Merchandising at the prestigious New York University. Her thesis, “The Role of the Negro in Retailing in New York City from 1863 to the Present” exemplified her commitment to the work she would end up doing at the Black Fashion Museum.
The Road Opener
“There is an oft-quoted myth that black people are ‘new-found talent’ in the fashion field and we want to change that.”
Lois K. Alexander-Lane, The Washington Post, 1981
In NYC she opened another boutique, Lois Alexander and Company, before founding both the Harlem Institute of Fashion (HIF) and the National Association of Milliners, Dressmakers, and Tailors in 1966. These two institutions were created to give the next generation of Black designers and garment workers access to education, employment, and a support network without the racial discrimination found throughout most of the rest of the fashion system.
The founding of the Harlem Institute of Fashion would serve as the genesis of the Black Fashion Museum as in 1978 the HIF received a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to establish a fashion museum.
Black Fashion Museum
Alexander-Lane would take on the role of ethnographer and fashion historian as she traveled across the United States collecting garments made by Black designers. She would collect pieces from many eras including pieces made by unnamed enslaved dressmakers to historic figures like Anne Lowe, Rosa Parks, and Stephen Burrows. This fieldwork informed her book Blacks in the History of Fashion, published in 1982.
In the late 1980s, The Black Fashion Museum moved from a Harlem brownstone to Washington, D.C. as a mobile museum, bringing the cultural artifacts to the community instead of vice versa.
By the time Lois K. Alexander-Lane’s only child, Joyce Bailey, took her mother’s place as executive director and curator of the museum Bailey found that funding was hard to come by.
With garments from the 1800s showing wear from the less-than-stellar climate conditions, Bailey started to weigh her options. Lacking a curation and preservation team, Bailey began looking for an institution that would properly care for the invaluable collection while keeping it accessible to the general public. “It had to be another museum, but not just any museum,” Bailey told the Washington Post in 2010.
Joyce Bailey donated her mother’s life work to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The collection is viewable at NMAAHC to this day.
After a long battle with Alzheimer’s and liver cancer, trailblazing foremother Lois K. Alexander-Lane passed at the age of 91 in Lanham, Maryland.
Works Cited
Bailey, Joyce. “Celebrating a Fashion Icon: Lois K Alexander Lane.” National Museums Liverpool, https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/celebrating-fashion-icon-lois-k-alexander-lane. Accessed 2024.
Bernstein, Adam. “Harlem Fashion Pioneer Lois Alexander Lane Dies.” Monterey Herald, Monterey Herald, 12 Sept. 2018, www.montereyherald.com/general-news/20071028/harlem-fashion-pioneer-lois-alexander-lane-dies/.
Bolden, Tonya. How to Build a Museum: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Viking Childrens Books, 2016.
Givhan, Robin. “Black Fashion Museum Collection Finds a Fine Home with Smithsonian.” Washington Post, 23 May 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/21/AR2010052101654.html.
“A Look at the Black Fashion Museum Collection and Designer Peter Davy – Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, artsandculture.google.com/story/a-look-at-the-black-fashion-museum-collection-and-designer-peter-davy-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture/_QWxdNNzX8ltJw?hl=en. Accessed 2024.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture: A Souvenir Book. Smithsonian Books, 2016.
Nichols, Elaine, and Adrienne Jones. “Wedding Dress for the Black Fashion Museum.” Willi Smith Community Archive, https://willismitharchive.cargo.site/Wedding-Dress-for-the-Black-Fashion-Museum. Accessed 2024.
Nichols, Elaine, and Joyce Bailey. “Joyce A. Bailey Oral History Interview.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, 11 July 2016, https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2016.129.3.1a-.2a?destination=/explore/collection/search%3Fedan_q%3D%252A%253A%252A%26edan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dname%253A%2522Black%252BFashion%252BMuseum%2522%26op%3DSearch. Accessed 2024.
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