Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair
This exhibition of stunning ensembles by leading designers tells the story of the fair's creator Eunice W. Johnson, who overcame racial prejudice to bring global fashion to African-American audiences.
Our tour leader will be Harvard Club member Ruth McDiarmid, Ph.D., an expeienced and charming docent.
Eunice Walker Johnson (1916-2010) was the wife of publisher John H. Johnson and an executive at Johnson Publishing Company. Johnson was best known as the founder and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair, which was started in the 1950s as a hospital fundraiser and became an annual fashion tour that highlighted fashion for African-American women that ran until a year before her death.
For fifty years, the Ebony Fashion Fair shaped a new vision of black America through contemporary fashion. This exhibition of stunning ensembles by leading designers tells the story of the fair’s creator Eunice W. Johnson, who overcame racial prejudice to bring global fashion to African-American audiences. Developed by the Chicago History Museum in cooperation with Johnson Publishing Company, LLC, presented by the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum, and toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C.
Free docent tour - Limited to members and their guests.