Kwame Brathwaite Courtesy of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive
Photographed by Kwame Brathwaite, Lois K. Alexander-Lane sits on a gold-striped banquette in a floor-skimming black dress. She beams for the camera, leans forward, clutching her prolific 1982 textbook, Black People in Fashion History, her earrings sparkling. Captured in all her splendor, the photograph is enveloped on all sides by the life’s work of one of the original pioneers of black fashion.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1916, Alexander Lane dreamed of a life in fashion, gazing at department store windows and sketching designs. After graduating from Hampton University in 1938, she moved to Washington, DC, where she worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 30 years. Her unwavering love for fashion led her to pursue a master’s degree in retail, fashion and merchandising at New York University, with a dissertation titled “The Role of the Negro in Retail Trade in New York City, 1863 to the Present.” In it, she countered the limited notions of the black experience in New York’s fashion world, citing Alice A. Cusnow’s 1895 book “Cusnow’s Guide to Cutting and Making the Artistic Dress” as a pivotal document in the history of tailoring and pattern-making by black designers. Touring Washington DC and New York, Alexander Lane opened clothing boutiques in both cities, catering to the black bourgeoisie and their desire for custom clothing.
By 1966, Alexander Lane founded the Harlem Institute of Fashion to provide a community that prepared students for careers in the fashion industry, according to the Monterey Herald. Amazingly, the designer was also a major investor in the school. Students who attended the institute could complete two semesters of courses and specialize in dressmaking, millinery, color, and design. With the creation of HIF, Alexander Lane ushered in a new generation of black designers with a deep understanding of clothing construction. By 1982, the institute had produced over 3,000 graduates.
The idea to create a Black Fashion Museum was born at a benefit show for the Harlem Fashion Institute in the late ’70s. Around the same time, Alexander Lane began drafting a grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts. Approved in April 1978, the Black Fashion Museum was initially funded by a $20,000 grant, according to Alexander Lane’s textbook, Black People in Fashion History. She matched this six-figure sum with her own funds because she believed in her vision to archive important works. This prompted her to take on a new role as chief curator and project director, working with consultants, part-time professionals, and volunteers.
Soon after receiving her NEA grant, Alexander-Lane set off on a nationwide journey in search of the roots of black fashion. She contacted countless newspapers to publicize her quest, scouring the country for family heirlooms and contemporary clothing. She reached out to the press beyond traditional black publications to receive the garments. She knew the historical significance of black seamstresses designing for white clients in this country, and she was determined to use the press to her advantage to accurately convey its importance. In a 1981 Washington Post article, Alexander-Lane described the museum’s goal of changing the image often associated with black designers. “The myth that blacks are ‘newfound talents’ is often cited in the fashion field, and we want to change that,” she said. In Blacks in Fashion History, she wrote: “Most of today’s designers tell me they learned to sew from their grandmothers. I want to talk to those people. I want clothes that their grandmothers made.” This is crucial. Because it draws attention to who she has been able to collect from whom over the years, especially since older matriarchs often store important family items and valuables in their attics.
Founded in a brownstone on 126th Street in Harlem, the Black Fashion Museum acquired 200 garments and accessories for its opening in 1979 and amassed 3,000 by the time it closed. These archival items ranged from muslin dresses and bonnets made by enslaved women to a dress sewn by Rosa Parks during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. More extravagantly, the archive also included a collection of ball gowns and dresses by Ann Lowe, the master black seamstress who created Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ wedding dress, and a reproduction of a dress by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a formerly enslaved woman who custom-made pieces for Mary Todd Lincoln.
The Black Fashion Museum not only includes contemporary clothing in its archives, but also takes it a step further by highlighting the work of one of the founders of streetwear, Willie Smith. Smith actively collaborated with Alexander-Lane to bring his collection into the museum’s impressive lineup. Jeffrey Holder’s costumes from The Wiz were exhibited in BFM’s “Black Theatre Costume” exhibit alongside Ntozake Shange’s dresses from When the Rainbow Was Full, For Colored Girls Who Thought of Suicide. Diahann Carroll’s William Travilla dresses from the sitcom Julia were housed in the archives alongside Zelda Wynn’s designs worn by Eartha Kitt and Ella Fitzgerald. Without shying away from the trauma and spotlight that complicate textile workers’ identities, Alexander-Lane represents the history of Black America through the labor we bear with every stitch.
In 1994, the Black Fashion Museum moved to a historic row house in Washington, DC. Alexander-Lane worked hard to run the museum for years until she began battling Alzheimer’s disease and then liver cancer. In 2007, Alexander-Lane passed away at the age of 91. According to The Washington Post, the museum was then taken over by her daughter, Joyce Bailey. In the last days of 2007, the Black Fashion Museum was struggling. Poor temperature control in the building caused moisture to damage the clothes. Before Alexander-Lane’s death, the priceless artifacts were not kept in proper storage and were hung on wire hangers. Raising funds was also difficult. After her death, her daughter struggled for years to raise donations to run the Black Fashion Museum archives. Eventually, she was able to donate her mother’s life’s work to the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute. Some of the pieces are housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Standing in the contemporary fashion moment, there is a constant negotiation of progress and retreat. This creates the illusion of progress at the expense of what is actually happening. Alexander Lane understood the importance of having an archive, a special memorial storage space for the few black garment workers who had amazing lives, and the women whose hands hurt from toiling for hours with needle and thread. It is exceptional that she felt the need for this and decided to do it as a way to pay tribute to these less famous designers.
Header image credit: Black Fashion Museum Archives, collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of the Black Fashion Museum founded by Lois K. Alexander Lane
