Being Fabulous

Ashley Callahan

EUNICE WALKER JOHNSON, 1970. Photographs courtesy of Johnson Publishing

Company, LLC, except where noted.

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he traveling fashion show known as the Ebony Fashion Fair presented haute
couture garments in venues ranging from high school gymnasiums in small towns
to grand ballrooms in large cities. The audiences, primarily middle and uppermiddle class African-American women, thrilled at the extravagant clothing, over-the-top
presentation and sense of community created through this annual shared experience.
Produced by Ebony magazine and directed for much of its run by Eunice Walker
Johnson, the Ebony Fashion Fair grew from traveling to about thirty cities the first year
to over one hundred eighty at its height. During its fifty-year history approximately
eighty-five hundred garments appeared on its runways, of which about thirty-five
hundred survive in the Johnson Publishing Companys
Ebony Fashion Fair archive. The collection consists
of remarkable examples of twentieth-century and
early twenty-first-century clothing, and documents
an exciting intersection between high fashion and the
African-American experience.
Joy Bivins, curator at the Chicago History Museum,
and Virginia Heaven, assistant professor in fashion
studies at Columbia College, working with Linda
Johnson Rice at Johnson Publishing Company,
presented the original exhibition, with sixty-seven
ensembles, at the Chicago History Museum in 2013 to
early 2014 and produced a lavishly illustrated
catalogue. For the next two years a slightly smaller
version of Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair, with forty garments, is
traveling the country, with its first stop at the Museum of Design Atlanta, in a city that
hosted the Ebony Fashion Fair from the early 1960s on.
Every selection in the exhibition is a highlight; the galleries are filled with color,
shimmer, texture, and pattern, and even as the senses are overwhelmed, visitors can
imagine the added stimulation of experiencing these garments as Johnson intended: in
motion. Alexander McQueens silver raffia evening dress for Givenchy (1997-98),
described in its exhibition label as evoking both a ghostly Elizabethan and a tribal
monarch, must make a memorable organic swishing noise, while Vivienne Westwoods
oddly sculptural gown with an audacious silk screen print (2002-03) would create
amazingly dynamic shapes and shadows, and Pierre Cardins blue multi-tiered, hooped,
sequined-covered evening dress (1988-89), would have glittered like a magical waterfall.
John H. Johnson (1918-2005) established Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago
in 1942, and at a time when popular media typically portrayed African Americans

through caricatures and photographs of criminals, he

offered images of accomplishment and style. He had
moved to Chicago from Arkansas with his mother in
1933 and worked for a black-owned insurance company
after high school. He married Eunice Walker (19162010), from a prominent family in Selma, Alabama, and
a graduate of Talladega College and Loyola University,
and together they developed Johnson Publishing
Company into a hugely successful business. In 1945 they
started what became the companys flagship magazine,
Ebony, named by Eunice Johnson to celebrate the dark
skin of the intended readership. Ebony, modeled after
Life magazine, addressed a variety of topics from the
Civil Rights Movement to black celebrities and included
photographs of African-American models wearing high
fashion. The Johnsons, described by their daughter
Linda Johnson Rice as maverick entrepreneurs,
realized that manufacturers were overlooking an eager
segment of American consumers and encouraged
companies to advertise directly to African Americans
through their publications. As Bivins wrote, Ebony

spoke to an audience hungry for visual representations

of itself that highlighted the positive aspects of their lives
and showcased possibilities for success. Through the
pages of Ebony, the Johnsons presented aspirational
images for African Americans, pictures of black people
achieving the American dream.
In 1956 the wife of the president of Dillard
University, a historically black liberal arts college in New
Orleans, approached Johnson about supplying models
for a charity fundraiser fashion show for a local hospital.
Hesitant to share models, he instead offered to provide
clothing, with the agreement that each ticket would
include a subscription to one of his companys
magazines. Following the success of this event, in 1958,
Johnson Publishing Company launched the Ebony
Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion show that captivated
audiences annually through 2009. The Ebony Fashion
Fair raised money for African-American charities and
included subscriptions to Ebony or Jet with each ticket.
During the shows heyday, from the 1960s through the
1980s, the Johnsons used their magazines and the Ebony

Lagerfelds showerhead evening gown from 1983 for

Chlo that conservatively suggests mens wear from the
front, with two vertical rows of buttons, and dazzles
from the back with a stunning spray of shiny bugle
beads raining from between the shoulder blades down to
the hem and ending with crystal drips. Eunice Johnson
not only brought high fashion to an African-American
audience, she brought the extremes of that rarified
world, and the collection in Inspiring Beauty reflects
her distinct design aesthetic.
Johnson included African Americans in all areas of
the Ebony Fashion Fairs, both behind-the-scenes and on
stage. The Ebony Fashion Fair proved to be an
important venue for African-American designers,
including Stephen Burrows, B Michael and Patrick
Kelly, who incorporated one shows theme Fashion
Scandal, in his dress from 1986. Kellys dress, with his
signature button embellishments on form-fitting black
jersey, has, on the front, large eyes placed over the
breasts and red lips from hip to hip, and on the back, in
a personalized touch that must have enthralled
audiences as the model pivoted at the end of the runway,
the words I [heart] Fashion Scandal.
The Ebony Fashion Fair also provided important
opportunities for African-American models, whom
Johnson recruited through advertisements in the
magazine rather than traditional modeling agencies. As
in the photographs on the pages of Ebony, Johnson
wanted her audience to see themselves reflected in the
models in the fair, so she employed black models,
including future supermodel Iman. Rice describes her
mother as a risk taker and a visionary who wanted to
erase the stigma that women of a certain color could not
wear particular shades, so she often placed the brightest
garments on the models with the darkest skin. Rice
particularly remembers one model, Terri Springer, with
very dark, beautiful, flawless skin, on whom her
mother would put the brightest yellow, the brightest
red, the brightest hot pink she couldShe thought, this
woman is gorgeous and Im going to put the most

The two-hour shows featured

daywear, swimwear, eveningwear, bridal wear, music, and an
intermissionenthusiastic, colorful, multisensory experiences. The
Ebony Fashion Fair was an important social event, and many
attendees recall that the fashion display in the audience rivaled the
spectacle on the runway as everyone donned their best, sometimes
most outrageous, attire.

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Tilmann Grawe (France). Cocktail dress of silk chin taffeta, horn, plastic and
glass beads, horsehair tubing, plastic boning: appeared in Living It Up.

Fashion Fair to expand access to haute couture from a

primarily upper-class white audience to everyday
African-American women. In an era well before the
internet gave anyone with a computer or smart phone
the ability to watch runway fashion shows, Ebony
Fashion Fair provided the rare opportunity for a group
long excluded from mainstream fashion to see these
extraordinary garments in person.
Production of the Ebony Fashion Fair faced many
challenges, the first of which was acquiring the right
clothing. John Johnson related in his autobiography that
he and his wife had to beg, persuade, and threaten to
get the right to buy clothes, when they started the
Ebony Fashion Fair. Eunice Johnson was one of the first
African-American women to travel to the fashion houses
in Europe and initially met resistance from some
designers who feared that some of their clientele would,
out of prejudice, cease buying from them if their
garments appeared on black women. Her persistence,
dignity, style, and checkbook triumphed, though, and
she became one of the best and most respected
customers of haute couture, buying up to two hundred
ensembles a year. While buyers from department stores
and boutiques needed to consider practical concerns like
marketability, Johnson had different criteria. She
considered how the garments would look in motion (the
bounce of Tilmann Grawes cocktail dress with tubes
and beads, 2003-04), how exciting they would appear
(the sparkle of Guy Laroches plaid and sequined mens
evening suit, 1972-73), and how an audience would
react (the shockingly modern shiny purple pants as
eveningwear by Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, 1968).
Rice explained, She was buying the most fantastic, the
most theatrical, the most glamorous, unusual pieces. She
wanted to buy what the stores didnt buy. She bought
what I call the laboratory of a designers ideas. Designer
Christian Lacroix recalled in W that, She was buying
the most difficult, eccentric, and flamboyant numbers,
often my favorites. She particularly favored garments
that allowed for a dramatic reveal, epitomized by Karl

gorgeous clothes on her. Johnson expected the models

to present the clothes with flair, to, as model Audrey
Adams told W, be fabulous, and models twirled, high
stepped, and flicked off wraps with extravagant gestures
to entertain the crowds.
Though the tone of the shows was joyous and
celebratory, not all of the traveling, especially in the
early decades, was easy. Del Handy, one of the models,
explained in an NPR interview about Mr. Johnsons
high standards for how the models would be
envisioned. She related that he would not let them enter
through back doors of restaurants when they traveled in
the South so that they would not be publicly subjected
to discrimination. Instead their white bus driver went
into the restaurants and brought them takeout food.
Another model (now supermodel), Pat Cleveland,
described, for W, a riot with people brandishing torches
outside their hotel that occurred once in 1965 while
they were in the South, adding, There were times when
we had to leave town quickly because we were being
harassed by the Ku Klux Klan.
For the first decades of the Ebony Fashion Fair, the
gulf between mainstream fashion and African-American
consumers was wide. For example, early readers of
Ebony had difficulty finding nylons that complemented
their legs. One woman, Tonya Talley-Smith, when
interviewed recently for NPR, recalled dyeing hose in

coffee to achieve the right hue. Models in the Ebony

Fashion Fair received pantyhose directly from Hanes,
and Rice noted, We had to ask for very specific tones.
We couldnt just take what they had in their stores.
Similarly, Rice explained that, in 1973, when her mother
realized that the models could not find makeup in their
skin tones and had to blend and mix various products,
she thought, We ought to be able to come up with a
cosmetics line that matches the different hues we have
as African Americans, from Alabaster to Brown Blaze
Glo, and created the still-popular Fashion Fair
Cosmetics line.
For each Ebony Fashion Fair, Johnson identified a
theme based on the trends she observed while attending
the couture fashion shows. Themes included The
Liberated Look, Whats Going On (after Marvin Gayes
hit song of 1971), Living the Fantasy, and Colorbaloo, a
show from the 1960s that Rice praised as very funky,
very cool. The two-hour shows featured daywear,
swimwear, eveningwear, bridal wear, music, and an
intermissionenthusiastic, colorful, multisensory
experiences. Early shows featured a live jazz trio, while
later ones shifted to a DJ and grew to include technology
such as special effects produced with an LED backdrop
curtain. Cleveland described the production as the
Harlem Globetrotters meets Cirque du Soleil. The
Ebony Fashion Fair was an important social event, and

SUGGESTED READING
Bivins, Joy L. and Rosemary K. Adams, eds., Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony
Fashion Fair. Chicago: Chicago History Museum, 2013.
Lyden, Jacki. The Ebony Fashion Fair: Changing History on the Catwalk,
The Seams, February 15, 2014, NPR website: http://www.npr.
org/2014/02/15/276987206/the-ebony-fashion-fair-changing-history-on-thecatwalk. (broadcast May 7, 2014)
Lawrence, Vanessa.Black Power Dressing, W, http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2013/03/eunice-johnson-ebony-magazine, March 2013.
Video documentary: Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair, produced by
Zero One Projects for the Chicago History Museum, written and directed by
Nat Soti, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4sjsbOQxZc.

GIVENCHY by Alexander McQueen (France). Evening

dress of synthetic raffia mounted on silk gauze:
appeared in The Jazz Age of Fashions.

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD (United Kingdom). Ball gown

of silk ribbon taffeta with hand-silkscreened print:
appeared in Simply Spectacular.

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INSTALLATION VIEW showing dress by Patrick Kelly (left), Chloe and Christian Lacroix.
Photograph courtesy of MODA

many attendees recall that the fashion display in the

audience rivaled the spectacle on the runway as everyone
donned their best, sometimes most outrageous, attire.
The exhibition Inspiring Fashion acknowledges the
participatory, multimedia aspects of the Ebony Fashion
Fair. It seamlessly incorporates a variety of media, from
an audio welcome by popular Ebony Fashion Fair
announcer Audrey Smaltz; to engaging videos about
Eunice Walker Johnson, John H. Johnson and Ebony,
and the Ebony Fashion Fair; to interactive digital
stations where visitors are invited to record their
experiences about attending the shows or read about the
experiences of others (available online at http://
ebonyfashionfairatl.org/). Visitors enter the exhibition
while walking a long red carpet and passing theater-style
dressing mirrors and with petite makeup tables. A
chronological display of reproductions of Ebony
Fashion Fair programsa quick history of changing
fashion silhouettesand concise labels further enhance
the visitors experiences by conveying the feel of the
related ephemera and imparting fascinating details
about each outfit.
After enjoying the overwhelming abundance of
visual stimulation and the genius of the garments in the
exhibition, an unusual aspect emerges as an additional
innovation: the mannequins. While many curators seek
props for fashion exhibitions that will enhance and not
compete with the garments, Inspiring Beauty features
realistic mannequins that quietly captivate the attention
of the observant visitor. Linda Johnson Rice feels
strongly that the Ebony Fashion Fair was about both the
clothes and the models, and believes the mannequins
should be an equally significant part of the exhibition:
the mannequins had to reflect the models and the way
the models looked, the different shade ranges, the
different facial features, the different sizes.Theres not
one that really looks like the other, because none of the
girls looked alike. This daring choice conveys the
importance of the Ebony Fashion Fair as not just a
world-class fashion experience, but as an important
cultural event. During each Ebony Fashion Fair, the
models were the vehicles for the clothing, but the
clothing provided an excuse to consider and celebrate
the beauty of the individual.