The Black Fashion Museum is a former museum that traced the historical contributions of black designers and clothing makers to fashion. Originally established in
Harlem in 1979 by
Lois K. Alexander Lane, and relocated to
Washington, D.C. in 1994, the museum operated until 2007, when the Black Fashion Museum Collection was accepted into the collections of the
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
History
In 1963,
Lois K. Alexander Lane was working on her master's thesis focused on the role of African Americans in the retail industry. This led her on a path to research and collect black fashion memorabilia throughout the country.
The museum was established in Harlem in 1966 by Alexander Lane as a means of telling African American history through fashion. The museum was an affiliate of the Harlem Institute of Fashion. Alexander Lane eventually received a $20,000 grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts to develop the Black Fashion Museum's collection. On October 21st, 1979, the museum moved to a Harlem
brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material.
Type ...
on 155 West 126th street (between
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard
Seventh Avenue – co-named Fashion Avenue in the Garment District and known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park – is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is sout ...
and
Lenox Avenue). The Civil Court judge
Bruce M. Wright Bruce McMarion Wright (born Marion Bruce Wright, December 19, 1917 – March 24, 2005) was an American jurist who served on the New York State Supreme Court. Judge Wright was also the father of Geoffrey D.S. Wright, a New York State Supreme Cour ...
cut the inaugural ribbon.
Upon its move to Washington DC, the museum was located in a two-story row house on
Vermont Avenue and faced increasing pressure due to the economy and potential damage to the collection from the lack of a museum quality HVAC system.
In 2007, Alexander-Lane's daughter, Joyce Bailey, donated the Black Fashion Museum's entire holdings to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Collection
Its collection comprised more than 700 garments, 300 accessories, and 60 boxes of archival material collected by Lois K. Alexander Lane throughout her life. Examples are:
* Replicas of ballgowns created by
Elizabeth Keckley, the once-enslaved dressmaker who became confidante to
Mary Todd Lincoln.
* Clothing and bonnets worn by slaves in the mid-1800s
* Elaborately constructed opera cape made by a former slave
* Beige-patterned skirt worn by an enslaved child in Leesburg, Va.
* Gowns by
Ann Lowe, a pioneering African American designer whose patrons included the
Rockefellers, the
Du Ponts, the
Vanderbilts, and
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, for whom she designed her wedding dress for her marriage to John F. Kennedy.
* Dress sewn by
Rosa Parks shortly before her famous arrest in Montgomery, Ala.
* The original
Tin Man costume designed by
Geoffrey Holder for the 1975 Broadway musical ''
The Wiz''.
References
{{reflist
External links
Black Fashion Museum Collectionon ''Nmaahc.si.edu''
1979 establishments in New York City
1994 establishments in Washington, D.C.
2007 disestablishments in Washington, D.C.
Fashion museums in the United States
African-American museums in New York City