Lois K. Alexander-Lane

Lois Marie Kindle (1916 - 2007), was born in Little Rock, Arkansas where as a young woman she liked peering into department store windows to sketch dress designs. She later started custom-wear boutiques in Washington DC and Harlem.

She was a 1938 graduate of what is now Hampton University in Virginia. In the 1950s, she did freelance photography for black newspapers and was vice president of the Capital Press Club, an organization for black journalists.

She founded the National Association of Milliners, Dressmakers and Tailors and was a former president of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers. She also was a charter member of the National Council of Negro Women.

She started a fashion institute and museum in New York's Harlem neighborhood to interest blacks in the garment trade and highlight their contributions to the industry.

She had a home in Washington DC., through much of her working life but settled in New York in the early 1960s to complete a master's degree in retailing, fashion and merchandising at New York University.

Her thesis explored the history of blacks in retailing, and her research led to discoveries of many unheralded African American dressmakers. Her continued interest led her to start the Harlem Institute of Fashion in 1966 and the Black Fashion Museum in 1979.

The institute gave free courses in dressmaking, millinery and tailoring as well as courses in English, mathematics and African American history. It brought Mrs. Alexander Lane many community honors, including the 1992 Josephine Shaw Lowell Award for her efforts to improve the lives of New York's poorest residents.

The museum, an arm of the institute started with a National Endowment for the Arts grant, exhibited clothing designed, sewn or worn by blacks since the 19th century.

One highlight was a collection of dresses the late Ann Lowe designed for patrons such as the Rockefellers, Roosevelts and DuPonts. Lowe also designed the wedding gown of future first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

"In the process we discovered that few Americans -- black or white -- are aware of the contributions made by black Americans in the creative fields of fashion," Mrs. Alexander Lane told The Washington Post in 1981. "There is an oft-quoted myth that black people are 'new-found talent' in the fashion field and we want to change that."

Mrs. Lane's daughter, Joyce Bailey along with her husband Norman Bailey opened the Black Fashion Museum in 1994 in the District of Columbia's Shaw neighborhood. Unfortunately, it struggled to find an audience and closed in 2009. However, its collections are now part of the National Museum of African American History & Culture at the Smithsonian Institute.

Lois K. Alexander-Lane died at the age of 91 on September 29, 2007 at the Magnolia Center nursing home in Lanham, Maryland.

Washington Post Staff Writer Adam Bernstein
Robert H. McNeill, Photographer, 'Posing Beauty' by Deborah Willis, Courtesy of Susan McNeill and the Estate of Robert H. McNeill