Lois K. Alexander Lane

Lois K. Alexander-Lane (born Lois Marie Kindle; July 11, 1916 – September 29, 2007) was an African-American fashion designer who founded the Black Fashion Museum in 1979.

Early life and education Lois Marie Kindle was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on July 11, 1916. As a child, Lois and her sister Sammye recreated clothing they had seen at white department stores. Due to her race she was not allowed to enter the stores. Using sketches she drew, Alexander-Lane made clothing for her mother, siblings and dolls with fabric she picked up at the Five & Dime store. She later married Julius Lane, a former paratrooper.

Alexander-Lane earned her master's degree in fashion and merchandising from New York University in 1963. was voted best of the year by faculty.

Career In the 1940s, Alexander-Lane ran a fashion boutique in Washington, D.C. Around this time, she also worked as a freelance photographer for African-American newspapers, and became vice president of the Capital Press Club. It was the first collection to highlight African-American fashion designers from throughout the country's history, and Alexander-Lane received little funding and largely funded the museum herself. She had trouble acquiring garments, as many of the designers had worked for wealthy white women, and the majority of the collection consisted of accessories and memorabilia. 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. She was part of The National Council of Negro Women, being a charter member. She became a show producer for Harlem Week, an exhibition of Harlem fashion, in 1979.

Death and legacy Alexander-Lane published a book, Blacks in the History of Fashion, in 1982. She 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.