Exploring the legacy of black fashion design

Clothes on displayed offers a glimpse into exactly how impactful designers of color have been through the decades. [Photo/Agencies]

Lowe was also the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman and an Alabama plantation owner. She learned to sew at the knees of her mother and grandmother.

"Yet she embraced all of the beauty of European couture," says Andre Leon Talley, the former editor-at-large for Vogue who remains a fashion pundit and served on the show's advisory committee.

The exhibition is intended as a sampling, not an all-consuming account of black contributions to fashion, but it does offer a wide range, from a modest ivory wedding gown by Lowe (not Jackie's) to a risque royal blue satin Playboy bunny uniform by Zelda Wynn Valdes.

Among others represented: Pyer Moss, Duro Olowu, Kevan Hall, Andre Walker, Lawrence Steele and Patrick Kelly.

And the legacy?

"The legacy is perseverance, and of struggling through many decades of culture," Talley says. "Struggling black individualism. Struggling in a country that perhaps did not recognize black people as designers. You have a rainbow of success based on innate quality and innate technique. They had dreams, and they put their dreams into fashion."