Memory Lane - Fashion Designers in Colour part 1

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane in search of the first notable designer of colour. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that fashion design as an art form came into existence. Before that, clothing design was the province of anonymous dressmakers.

Charles Frederick Worth changed all that. Worth was actually a Englishman who moved across the channel to France and made his name by becoming a huge favourite of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. He set up his maison couture (or fashion house) in Paris in 1858, marking the city out as the fashion headquarters of the world.

As you can see in this photo below, Worth used lavish textiles and ornamental embroidery picked out in metallic thread and glass or crystal beads.

Charles Frederick Worth dress circa 1887 (L)

Meanwhile, across the pond in the United States of America, a former slave Elizabeth Keckley was making waves of her own. Keckley was taught dressmaking skills by her mother and had used them to buy her freedom and that of her son from her slave master. Soon afterward, she moved to the nation’s capital where she became dressmaker of choice to the Washington political wives.

Photos of Elizabeth Keckley at different stages of her life

An introduction to Mary Todd, wife of President Abraham Lincoln, soon followed. Keckley became her personal modiste, designing her dresses for both inaugurations in 1861 and 1865.

Mary Todd Lincoln and her inauguration dresses

The two women developed a great friendship, with Keckley proving to be a huge support to Mrs Lincoln after the deaths of two of her sons, and later after the assassination of her husband. Sadly, their friendship ended after Keckley published a book called Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House.

A ‘kiss-n-tell’ scandal ahead of its time, Keckley insisted she wrote the book in an ‘attempt to place Mrs Lincoln in a better light before the world.’ However, the ensuing furore led to the diminishing of her white clientele. Keckley later became a university lecturer before dying in the National Home for Destitute Coloured Women and Children in Washington DC.

We'll continue our look at the history of black and mixed race fashion designers next week.