Elizabeth Keckley

Born enslaved, Keckley bought her own freedom and built a dressmaking business in Washington whose best-known client was Mary Todd Lincoln. A purple velvet gown believed to be her work, worn by the first lady in the 1861-62 Washington social season, survives at the Smithsonian, and its fit and finish show why she opens this list: the Black tradition in American fashion starts with dressmakers like her, sewing for society clients who rarely named them in public. Her 1868 memoir, Behind the Scenes, gave a rare inside account of the Lincoln White House. Mary Lincoln was angered by it, and the two never spoke again.