Lois K. Alexander Lane

Lois K. Alexander Lane
Born	July 11, 1916 Little Rock, Arkansas
Died	September 29, 2007
Occupation	Fashion designer and museum founder

Lois K. Alexander-Lane (born Lois Marie Kindle; 11 July 1916^[1] - 29 September 2007) was an African American fashion designer and founded the Black Fashion Museum in 1979.

Early life and education[]

Lois Marie Kindle was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on July 11, 1916.^[2][3] As a child, Lois and her sister Sammye would recreate fashions seen at white department stores.^[4] She studied at the Hampton Institute and later the University of Chicago.^[5] She later married Julius Lane, a former paratrooper.^[6][5]

Alexander-Lane received her master's degree in fashion and merchandising at New York University^[5] in 1963 where she proposed a thesis on the historic role of African Americans in Manhattan retailing. Her professor responded by saying African Americans played no such role. Her resulting thesis "The Role of the Negro in Retailing in New York City from 1863 to the Present" (1963)—and later her life's work—proved otherwise.^[7][8] The thesis was voted best of the year by faculty.^[5]

Career[]

In the 1940s, Alexander-Lane ran a fashion boutique in Washington, D.C.^[4] In 1942, she became a clerk-stenographer for the War Department. She later transferred to New York where she opened another boutique and worked her way up to a Planning and Community Development Officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1978.^[3][4][8]

In 1965, she purchased a brownstone in Harlem, New York City, for $8,000^[4] where she founded the Harlem Institute of Fashion in 1966 offering courses in dressmaking, millinery and tailoring.^[8] The courses were free with only a $10 registration fee and graduated 4,500 students by 1987.^[5] She also founded the National Association of Milliners, Dressmakers and Tailors in 1966.^[8]

After leaving the federal government, Alexander-Lane opened the Black Fashion Museum in Harlem in 1979 with a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.^[8][4] Originally established in Harlem on West 126th Street that now houses the William J. Clinton Foundation.^[2] It was the first collection to highlight black designers in the fashion industry throughout the country's history and Alexander-Lane received little funding and largely funded the museum herself. Because of the nature of who black designers worked for, wealthy white women, Alexander-Lane had trouble acquiring garments from those individuals and the majority of the collection consisted of accessories and memorabilia.^[6]

The museum relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1994 to a historic row house at 2007 Vermont Ave. NW.^[9] The collection comprises about two thousand garments, designed, fabricated or worn by African-Americans to tell the story of women and men of the African diaspora. The collection includes garments created by enslaved women; a dress sewn by Rosa Parks shortly before her famous arrest in Montgomery, Alabama; the original costumes designed by Geoffrey Holder for the 1975 Broadway musical, The Wiz; and gowns by Ann Lowe, a pioneering African-American designer.^[3] It was the first collection to highlight black designers in the fashion industry throughout the country's history.^[6]

In 1993, Alexander-Lane received the NAACP's Crusader's Award.^[10]

Death and legacy[]

Alexander-Lane eventually published her own book, Blacks in the History of Fashion in 1982. Alexander-Lane died in 2007 at the age of 91. The Black Fashion Museum collection was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2007 by her daughter Joyce Bailey.^[9]

References[]