Lois Alexander Lane

Lois Katherine Alexander was born on the twenty-eighth of June 1916 at Little Rock, Arkansas, the daughter of a Little Rock Black family of the principal post-Reconstruction Arkansas Black middle-class community. She was raised in the segregated Black community of post-Reconstruction Little Rock.

She completed the bachelor's degree at Hampton Institute at Hampton, Virginia in 1937 — and the master's degree in retailing at New York University at New York in 1962.

She was employed across the principal post-Hampton career at the principal United States Department of Commerce and the principal Small Business Administration from 1937 to 1962 — and at the principal Veterans Administration from 1962 to 1965.

She founded the principal Harlem Institute of Fashion at New York in 1966 — the principal first Black-American fashion-design-and-merchandising school at Harlem of the principal post-1965 Harlem urban-renewal period — and operated the principal Harlem Institute of Fashion at the principal 157 West 126th Street address from 1966 to 2002.

She founded the principal Black Fashion Museum at Harlem in 1979 — the principal first Black-American-fashion-history museum in the United States — and operated the principal Black Fashion Museum at the principal Harlem Institute of Fashion building from 1979 to 2002.

She acquired across the principal post-1979 period the principal Black Fashion Museum collection of approximately five thousand garments and accessories — including the principal Ann Lowe Bouvier-Kennedy wedding-dress reproduction of 1953, the principal Elizabeth Keckley Mary Todd Lincoln gown reproductions, the principal Zelda Wynn Valdes Playboy Bunny costume of 1960, the principal Patrick Kelly Chambre-Syndicale-period commercial collection of 1988, and the principal Willi Smith WilliWear commercial collection of 1976 to 1987 (all designers placed in this archive).

She published the principal 1982 monograph Blacks in the History of Fashion at the Harlem Institute of Fashion at New York — the principal first comprehensive Black-American fashion-history publication of the principal post-Second-World-War period.

She was named in 1990 the principal Black-American-fashion-industry-history-and-archive director of the Costume Institute Special Programs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York — and held the principal Costume Institute Black-fashion-archive director position from 1990 to 2002.

The principal Black Fashion Museum collection was donated by Lane in 2007 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D.C. — and is at this day the principal Black-American fashion-history collection at the Smithsonian.

She died at Cheverly, Maryland on the twenty-fifth of October 2007 of complications of cancer, at ninety-one.

She is honored here as the founder of the Black Fashion Museum.