Mary T. & Lizzy K. runs through May 5, 2013, at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Illustration by Jody Hewgill.
Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery in 1818 in Virginia. Although she encountered one hardship after another, with sheer determination, a network of supporters and valuable dressmaking skills, she eventually bought her freedom from her St. Louis owners for $1,200. She made her way to Washington, D.C. in 1860 to establish her own dressmaking business and met first lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
Soon after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, in 1861, the FLOTUS hired Keckley (also spelled Keckly) as her personal modiste. Keckley took on the role of dressmaker, personal dresser and confidante, and the two women formed a special bond. Mary T. and Lizzy K., a new play written and directed by Tazewell Thompson, explores their relationship.
Much has been researched, written and analyzed about Keckley’s life as a result of the unusual friendship. In 1868, Keckley published a detailed account of her life in the autobiography Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. A thorough study of her dressmaking legacy is still being uncovered, though, explained Elizabeth Way, a former Smithsonian researcher and New York University costume studies graduate student who worked for the Smithsonian last summer researching Keckley.
Prompted by Mary T. and Lizzy K., which runs through May 5, 2013, at the Mead Center for American Theater at Arena Stage in Washington, Threaded spoke with Way about Keckley’s dressmaking handiwork.
Are Elizabeth Keckley designs accessible today?
Few still exist actually and of the pieces that do, there is a question of whether they can be attributed to Keckley. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has a Mary Lincoln gown, a purple velvet dress with two bodices that the first lady wore during the second presidential inauguration. There is a buffalo plaid green and white day dress with a cape at the Chicago History Museum and at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Illinois, a black silk dress with a strawberry motif likely worn to a strawberry party, part of a 19th-century Midwestern picnic tradition, has been disputed on whether it is a Keckley. Penn State has a quilt that Keckley made from dress fabrics and there are other items floating around in collections. For example, Howard University has a pincushion with her name inscribed on it.
Elizabeth Keckley
Why is it difficult to attribute clothes to Keckley?
At the time no labels or tags were used and because fabric was so expensive, dresses were often taken apart and reconstructed as a completely different dress using the same material. She made clothes for many official women in Washington, so one way to determine a Keckley dress is if any of those women kept a journal and noted that detail in it.
I assume she followed fashion conventions of the mid- to late 19th century, but did she have a specific style?
Her style was very pared down and sophisticated, which a lot of people do not imagine when they think of the Victorian era. Her designs tended to be very streamlined. Not a lot of lace or ribbon. A very clean design.
How did she build such a thriving business as an African-American woman in the mid-1800s?
She was very skilled at building her client network which was notable considering she was a black woman and previously enslaved. She consistently made friends with the right people and got them to help her, which was not only a testament to those people but also to her. She had incredible business savvy.
Would she sew the entire dress?
When she started out, she would do the complete dress, sew it, add the trim, everything. As she became more successful, she was able to hire seamstresses to do some of the sewing and she trained people to help with the construction. Generally, she would work on the fit of the dresses.
Mary Lincoln’s purple velvet skirt and daytime bodice are believed to have been made by African-American dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley. The first lady wore the gown during the Washington winter social season in 1861–62. National Museum of American History.
Was Mary Lincoln wearing only Keckley while she was the first lady?
Mary Lincoln liked to shop. She would go to New York to shop at the department stores, which were just emerging at the time. You could buy ribbon and trim and anything unfitted, like a cape. It was the beginning of mass production. All dresses had to be made by a dressmaker because the fit was so specific and had to be customized. Mary Lincoln was said to order 15, 16 dresses each season, which took about three months to make.
While Mary Lincoln was known and criticized for an overly youthful style that embraced bright colors and floral patterns, her dresses made by Keckley that have survived are the opposite of that style—Keckley really designed with very clean lines.
Striped and floral Mary Lincoln dress, attributed to Keckley, significantly altered from original design. Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Where did Mary Lincoln, or other women for that matter, find out about fashion trends?
Fashion at this time copied France line for line. Whatever was happening at the French court was what women in D.C. wanted.
Elizabeth Keckley was an incredible businesswoman and was also known for her beauty.
In her memoir, she recalls that people thought she was beautiful. The Washington Bee, the African American newspaper, treated her like a black socialite within the African-American community. She dressed well, not gaudy or showy but pared down and refined. She was known for being elegant, upright and appropriate—the Victorian ideal.
How did that Victorian approach play into Keckley’s designs?
The Victorian ideals permeated all levels of American culture and determined what it meant to be an appropriate woman no matter who you were. There were so many social rules on what one wore in the daytime and at night, and Keckley’s garments all followed those rules especially for Mary Lincoln, who was in the public eye so frequently.
How long would it take Keckley to make one dress?
Possibly two or three weeks. To drape and cut the fabric, to use a sewing machine on some parts and hand-stitch others. Also, she made multiple dresses at a time and by the time she was a successful dressmaker in Washington, she also had seamstresses working with her.
What was Keckley most known for among the women of Washington who wanted a dress from her?
Her fit and her adeptness when it came to draping fabric on the body. She was known to be the dressmaker in D.C. because her garments had extraordinary fit.
What were the dressmaking tools she would have used at the time?
A rudimentary sewing machine which is displayed at the Chicago History Museum, pins and needles. She may have measured with inches but that system was so new, she could have used another marking system for measurement. And she may have used a drafting system that came out in the 1820s for patternmaking.
How much was Keckley earning at the time when she made dresses for Mary Lincoln?
When Keckley first moved to D.C. and worked as a seamstress for a dressmaker, she made $2.50 a day. She recalls in her memoir that when she became a dressmaker, she made a dress for Anna Mason Lee who was attending a reception with the Prince of Wales in 1860, a highly social event in D.C. Captain Lee gave Keckley $100 to purchase lace and trim for his wife’s dress. So while that does not quite speak to how much she was earning, it does put things in perspective and suggests the level of cost and the timeline of moving from a seamstress to a dressmaker. In fact, when she bought the trim from the trim store, Harper Mitchell, for Lee’s dress, the shop gave her a $25 commission for the purchase. That $25 was already ten times what she was making as a seamstress when she first came to Washington. Working as a dressmaker was the highest-paid opportunity women had during that time and Keckley’s dresses were known to be very expensive, the envy of women in Washington.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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