SECTION ONE
1
Joy L. Bivins
Between May 2011 and February 2013, Chicago History Museum staff developed an exhibition entitled Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair. The installation, which opened in March 2013, occupied just over 7,000 square feet, or 650 square meters, and included sixty-seven fully articulated mannequins dressed in ensembles created by some of the fashion world’s most revered designers, as well as lesser-known but no less significant ones (Plate 1.1). All garments were borrowed from the collection of the Johnson Publishing Company, a key figure in the exhibition story. The Inspiring Beauty project explored the history of a unique fashion phenomenon called the Ebony Fashion Fair—a traveling fashion show developed and promoted by Chicago-based media giant, Johnson Publishing Company for five decades. The traveling extravaganza, which regularly featured more than 150 garments in each show, took its name from the fashion column of that company’s premier publication, Ebony—a magazine developed primarily to visually capture and reflect the best of black American life. This text examines some of the key ideas about the traveling fashion show that Inspiring Beauty attempted to interpret. While it explores the history and context of the traveling fashion show, this text also highlights that color, as a reiterated aesthetic theme, was utilized within the Ebony Fashion Fair to shape its audiences’ perceptions of the possibilities of fashion and style.
When the first Ebony Fashion Fair took place in 1958, black Americans were still crippled by the challenges of legal segregation and racial violence. Indeed, institutionalized racism impacted nearly every aspect of black life, from where one lived and went to school to where and how one shopped. However, in spite of the realities of racism, this was also a moment full of great promise as the activism and protests of the Civil Rights Movement became more visible and African Americans began to demand fuller inclusion in American life. Against this backdrop of historic change, the Ebony Fashion Fair took to the road bringing garments to the still-segregated South and the less-segregated North. In its first season, the traveling fashion show stopped in nearly thirty cities around the United States, including Cincinnati, Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans. In each venue, it brought the latest European and American fashions to majority black and female audiences. Each show offered eager audiences the chance to see exclusive and unique garments which were typically only accessible on the pages of fashion magazines and almost always on non-black bodies. This formula of bringing high design from European and American fashion centers and presenting those garments on black models remained constant as the show grew and added more designers and new cities to its schedule. Indeed, until its last season in 2009, the Ebony Fashion Fair afforded audiences the opportunity to see creations from haute couture fashion houses such as Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, and Valentino. As important, it showcased designs from well- and lesser-known black American designers including Stephen Burrows, Rufus Barkley, and b michael.
In every venue, Ebony Fashion Fair audiences were treated to a show that was just under two hours and included multiple ensembles, ranging from daywear and swimwear to formal evening wear and a bridal finale. In those shows, models did more than simply wear the garments; they performed in them. Models delighted crowds with their dancing, precise twirling, and acting ability performing in short sketches that often featured male and female models dressed in coordinating ensembles. Within the show, fashion and entertainment merged to create a one-of-a-kind experience. The show didn’t discriminate based on location either. It brought the same fashions and performance to audiences in smaller towns, such as Itta Bena, Mississippi, or Peoria, Illinois, that it did to those in the American fashion capitals of New York City or Los Angeles. By the mid-1970s, the show had grown so popular that the traveling season lasted the majority of the year—beginning in the fall and ending in the spring. During the next decade the show reached the peak of its popularity and brought designer fashions to more than 180 cities and to tens of thousands of viewers. In addition to a fashion showcase, the traveling show was a charity fund-raiser that raised more than 55 million dollars for various black charities across the United States. Likewise it performed an entrepreneurial role as each ticket came with a subscription to either Ebony or Jet magazine, a means to increase or, at least, sustain Johnson Publishing Company’s readership.
Above all, the Ebony Fashion Fair was a celebration of the fantasy of fashion and garments within it were selected because of their flair, opulence, and exclusivity. The show was a spectacular production, but it was also a celebration of black beauty on a grand scale. It was not lost on anyone in the audience that the garments were not only beautiful but they were modeled on striking women and men who looked like people in their communities, like those in their families, like them. Specifically, the show gave black women a chance to not only see themselves as the standard of beauty but it, in many ways, normalized the audacious display of black beauty and black glamour. The Ebony Fashion Fair runway, especially in the show’s earliest years, provided a platform for its audience to see blackness displayed in ways rarely seen within mainstream culture. In this context, the show aligned itself strictly with Ebony and other Johnson Publishing periodicals, which were all about showing black Americans the best of themselves. From its beginning in 1945, Ebony specifically celebrated black achievement and showcased black excellence within its pages by highlighting African Americans who were excelling in fields from entertainment and politics to science and business. Ebony provided visual examples of black success and beauty and glamour were part of that picture.1 In many ways, the traveling fashion show reinforced these ideals with an audience who knew precisely what to expect because they had already witnessed such aspirational images within the pages of Ebony, Jet, and other Johnson publications.2
Understanding this is critical in recognizing the traveling show as both a unique fashion experience and a distinctive cultural phenomenon. Throughout its history, the Ebony Fashion Fair amounted to a collection of events, encompassing both the celebration of fashion and a distinctive black American culture. From the show programs and the remaining garment collection, it was clear that Ebony Fashion Fair producers took great care in selecting the very best that the fashion world had to offer. In return, audiences attended dressed in their finery ready to “fit in” with the fashion on view. And, while it’s clear that great attention was paid to the details of a particular seasons’ hemlines, fabrics, and silhouettes, garments were also selected with a keen awareness of what the women in these audiences wanted to see and would respond well to. Thus certain aesthetic ideas were repeated throughout the history of the traveling show. A preponderance of fine materials, such as leather, feather, and fur, as well as vibrant and stunning color comprised Ebony Fashion Fair looks. The person in charge of striking that balance was Eunice Walker Johnson, the show’s long-time producer and director (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Garment grouping entitled “Mrs Johnson’s Fashion Fair” introduced the idea that Eunice Johnson was the visionary of the Ebony Fashion Fair. © Photograph by and courtesy of the Chicago History Museum.
Eunice Johnson was part owner of Johnson Publishing Company and served as Ebony’s fashion director and treasurer. For most of her life, Johnson had maintained a deep interest in fashion, art, and design, even pursuing a career in interior design at various points. But, from 1963 until the show ended, she was responsible for establishing and codifying the vision of the Ebony Fashion Fair. In that time, she proved that she had a connoisseur eye, forged relationships with up-and-coming designers as well as established fashion houses, and made it evident that she was a serious consumer of high fashion. She made precise decisions about what Ebony Fashion Fair audiences should see and through the auspices of her company, she purchased everything that audiences saw in a particular season. That purchasing power eventually garnered her access to the exclusive world of high fashion—an exclusivity she shared with those who attended the Ebony Fashion Fair itself. Her goal was simple: expose audiences via the fashion shows and Ebony magazine to the highest quality fashion available. Until the late 1990s when her health began to fade, Mrs. Johnson traveled to the shows and showrooms to personally choose the fashion story for that season’s Fashion Fair. She often purchased samples and was able to negotiate deals because of the sheer volume she purchased for the traveling show. Through selected garments, she shared the exclusive world of high fashion with her audiences.
Within the Chicago History Museum exhibition, an attempt was made to explore many of the ideas that Johnson presented consistently within the Fashion Fair shows. The museum project was organized into three thematic sections: Vision, Innovation, and Power. These sections were used to help shape and further the story told within the galleries and provided visitors ways to understand the selected garments. The first section included thirty-five ensembles and established Eunice Johnson as the visionary of the Ebony Fashion Fair by claiming that what audiences saw within the traveling show reflected her vision of glamour, taste, and high design. Garments within this section were meant to encapsulate aesthetic ideas that were repeated throughout the history of the show such as head-to-toe looks or complete ensembles, which reflected the attention paid to every detail of each look, and body-revealing silhouettes that showed the dramatic gowns featured within the traveling show. More than anything, however, this section introduced the unabashed use of bold color as perhaps the most consistent aesthetic theme of the Ebony Fashion Fair. Selected garments within the Vision section repeatedly reminded visitors of the centrality and importance of color within the Ebony Fashion Fair.
The prevalence of red, blue, purple, and yellow emerged to express an audacious idea about what the women in the audience not only could but should wear. Within the Ebony Fashion Fair, it provided a means for the rejection of old ideas about blackness and the celebration of black beauty. In testament to this, John Johnson, founder of the publishing house and husband to Eunice Johnson, states in his autobiography that “… the show has given Black America and the world a new concept of the kinds of clothes Black women can wear. Before the Ebony Fashion Show, people said Black women couldn’t wear red or yellow or purple. The fashion show proved that Black women could wear any color they wanted to wear.”3 Mr. Johnson did not elaborate on who these people were that said black American women could not wear color, but he followed his initial color comments by stating that one of the show’s earliest and best models, Terri Springer, frequently sashayed across the stage in spectacular colors that defined “Black is Beautiful” before the phrase became popular in the late 1960s. Color, then, was not only a reiterated aesthetic theme, but it was also a way for the fashion show’s producers to shape audiences’ perceptions about black fashion, style, beauty, and the possibilities therein. And, while it appeared that color was positioned as a way to highlight and celebrate the diversity of black beauty, at the same time, it was also utilized to express a certain type of freedom: in this instance, freedom from rules that denigrated darker skin tones. As opposed to hiding one’s skin with muted tones, the Ebony Fashion Fair invited audience members to use color to enhance and embrace it. Here, again the traveling show intersects with the aspirational images and ideas found within Ebony magazine about the possibilities of black life, and those possibilities included celebrating black beauty.
As a result of its significant role within the Ebony Fashion Fair, color was a highlighted and repeated aesthetic theme within Inspiring Beauty. Many of the garments within the exhibition are not black—the standard fashion color—but rather reflect the vividness of the garments modeled in Ebony’s traveling show. Not only were the extant collections bursting with color but its consistent display played a role in what the show attempted to express about the power and freedom of self-presentation. Anything was possible according to the Ebony Fashion Fair—there were few things that audience members could not wear as evidenced by the fashion on the traveling show’s runways. In city after city, the Ebony Fashion Fair provided its audiences with access to the possibilities of fashion. And, color was one of the primary tools used to accomplish this.
In Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair, this was specifically illustrated by a grouping of dressed figures in an exhibition subsection entitled “The Power of Color”4 (Plate 1.2). The purpose of this grouping was to provide visitors not only with a spectacle of luscious and seductive color, but also to give them a reference and an interpretation of what Mr. Johnson stated in his autobiography about pairing the brightest hues with the brownest models. To emphasize what he identified as this unique aspect of the Ebony Fashion Fair, the most vibrant colored garments in the Inspiring Beauty exhibition were shown on the deepest dark brown mannequins, which were custom-made for it. In fact, all exhibition garments were displayed on realistic head-to-toe figures created in four brown tones, thus providing the visitors with an experience similar to the unabashed celebration of a multiplicity of brown and black skin tones they might have seen at the traveling show itself. This unique type of display further reiterated the color theme and reinforced the idea that within the Ebony Fashion Fair, who wore the garment (mostly black female models), was just as important as the ensembles on the runway. “The Power of Color” grouping contained ten couture creations by a wide range of fashion designers, including b michael, Nina Ricci, Bob Mackie, Sarli, Balestra, and Fabrice. Also, included here was a full-figured gown, one of two in the show, designed specifically for the Ebony Fashion Fair by Todd Oldham. While this group of figures was the most pronounced expression of color as a repeated aesthetic idea in the exhibition, purple, orange, citrine, and especially red were also very much present throughout the entire exhibition.
The first section of the exhibition establishes Mrs. Johnson as the visionary of the Ebony Fashion Fair and does so by including multiple examples of the types of garments chosen for the show. In the second section, Innovation, the story of the Johnson Publishing enterprise takes center stage and only contains ten ensembles. But, many of those ensembles still speak to the abundant use of color within the Ebony Fashion Fair. For instance, a bold yellow gown by Emanuel Ungaro for the Fall/Winter 1987 season signifies the importance of color. Featured in a grouping entitled “Fashion in Orbit,” the gown was the cover look for the 1987 season of the Ebony Fashion Fair—proving again that boldly colored garments were often the star of the show and is displayed as the focal point for this fashion-forward group (Plate 1.3). Similarly, in the last section of the exhibition, Power, color plays a prominent role. Power features nineteen garments that represent the high caliber of fashion that drew audiences year after year to the traveling show. The section is designed to provide visitors with an overwhelming sense of fashion’s ability to delight and titillate. Feathers, jewels, and fine fabrics are the hallmark of this section’s selections as they were within the traveling show itself. Included within the section is a peach Valentino gown from the Spring/Summer 1974 season, a bold orange and black tiger print designed by Carolina Herrera in the early 1980s, and a purple sequined jumpsuit with matching wool coat from Dior’s Fall/Winter 1968 season, one of the oldest ensembles in the exhibition. Each garment selected for this section was chosen as a testament to Mrs. Johnson’s power to bring such fine examples of high design to audiences across the United States in the Ebony Fashion Fair.
Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair is the first exhibition to interpret the history of Johnson Publishing’s famed traveling fashion show. Within the exhibition, an attempt was made to create multiple entry points for those unfamiliar with the content and the numerous visitors, of every hue and from all walks of life, who shared their stories of attending the Ebony Fashion Fair on a regular basis. In the galleries, history, biography, entrepreneurism, and fashion combined to tell a powerful story. The garments were selected, yes, because they were beautiful and iconic but most importantly because they helped to reveal a unique story that reflected the way fashion provided a means of empowerment for black women and helped create impactful images of black beauty. And, this was a critical way in which fashion was used within the traveling show itself. Eunice Johnson shared her exclusive fashion-insider status with many thousands of viewers repeatedly for nearly five decades within the traveling show. These same viewers were able to examine these high fashion garments in person and were encouraged to imagine themselves wearing them.
Mr. Johnson’s opinions about color were easily accessible because he, unlike his wife, wrote an autobiography. Eunice Johnson, instead, recorded her reflections and thoughts about the use of color in the many articles she penned for Ebony magazine but more importantly, she displayed her ideas through the garments that she selected for the Ebony Fashion Fair runway. Her efforts as a tastemaker, fashion icon, and pioneering businesswoman are worthy of more focused scholarship if for no other reason than to bring attention to her status as an often lone black woman in the exclusive world of high fashion in the middle of the twentieth century. She used fashion to help expand her business and for philanthropic causes but she also used it to open doors previously closed to African Americans. Interpreting this history within the exhibition provided an opportunity to examine and expose the impact of the traveling show for those who witnessed it and were transformed by the ways in which black beauty was celebrated.
Throughout this text, it can be seen that color played a significant role in both the Ebony Fashion Fair shows and the Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair exhibition. Within the exhibition, using color as a theme in multiple garment groupings and didactics was not only a way to showcase beautiful garments, but it was also a way to express the personal potential and freedom that the Ebony Fashion Fair espoused. Within the traveling fashion show, the red, yellow, purple, and host of other colors about which Mr. Johnson spoke and Mrs. Johnson displayed continuously and fiercely were used to celebrate not only who one was, but also who one might become.
Notes
1 Green, Adam. (2007), Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 142–156.
2 Johnson Publishing Company was founded in 1942, and the inaugural issue of Ebony appeared in November 1945. In its seven-decade history, Johnson Publishing produced more than a dozen periodicals including Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Hue, among others. Ebony is the only remaining print publication.
3 Johnson, John with Lerone Bennet, Jr. (1992), Succeeding Against the Odds: The Autobiography of a Great American Businessman, New York: Armistad, 260.
4 Titles for each garment grouping were drawn directly from the theme of a particular Ebony Fashion Fair season.