Alexander decided to do something about that. In 1979, with a $20,000 federal grant, she opened the Black Fashion Museum in the heart of Harlem. In a renovated brownstone adjacent to the fashion school she runs with her husband, Alexander, 74, puts together small exhibitions from her current collection of 5,500 outfits by black designers. Here is a copy of the purple-and-ecru lace ball dress made for Mary Todd Lincoln by Elizabeth Keckley (1820-1907). Next to it is a pink-and-white party frock by Ann Lowe, who for 50 years designed almost exclusively for America’s wealthiest women, including Olivia de Havilland and Jacqueline Kennedy. In another room is a blue velvet evening gown by Jay Smith, who went to Paris in the 1970s after an unsuccessful struggle to build a fashion business in the United States. He became a protege of the artist and illustrator Erte and designed for two years for Givenchy.
Opposite the Smith gown, next to a wedding dress by Willi Smith, is Alexander’s most treasured exhibit–a simple yellow floral nylon dress that Rosa Parks was making in 1955, just before she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white male. Parks’s arrest sparked the start of the civil-rights movement. “These aren’t just clothes,” Alexander says. “This is a sideline to history.” And claiming a legitimate place in history is what the Black Fashion Museum is all about.
