The Dress

The Dress. . , A fashionable gown: 'Indian Chintz, white Ground, with Stripes and Figures of different Sorts of red, if not other Colours', Walking down the street in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1786, Charlotte, a seamstress enslaved at Mount Vernon, found herself embroiled in a dispute with a white woman, Mrs. Maclver, who was upset seeing Charlotte wearing a gown that had been stolen from her two years carlier. Charlotte, however, had legally purchased the dress from another person., However, Mrs. Maclver and her husband were incensed over an enslaved woman wearing "their" clothing. Charlotte had made stylish alterations to the garment, reflecting her skill and transforming it into the latest fashion., The gown had been stolen by a young white woman whom Mrs. MacIver had befriended. While escaping with the stolen goods, the young white woman used the gown to pay an enslaved man at Abingdon Plantation to row her across the Potomac to Georgetown, thus escaping those who were pursuing her. The enslaved man at Abingdon gave the gown to his wife, who then sold it to Charlotte., Charlotte's stroll down an Alexandria street was a radical scene. On Charlotte, an Indian chintz dress challenged the strict social order of the times, undermined racialized dress regimes and, ultimately, proclaimed an enslaved woman's right to her a own style., These interpretive exhibits include archival research and text provided by Dr. Thomas Foster, Howard University (2020-2021)