I should probably take this time to point out the importance of slaves in fashion from before 1864 

omgthatdress:

I’d bet anyone a million dollars that a good number of antebellum American dresses that are in museums today were made by slave seamstresses, who were often just as skilled as any Parisian couturier when it comes to a needle and thread.  Unfortunately, the specific history of such dresses is often un-documented, so it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint a dress as just being from the South, let alone who made it for what purpose.  Even if a museum would have some form of documentation saying a dress was from North Carolina or any other slave state, that sort of information is rarely put up online alongside the dress.  Even after slavery ended we see this pattern of dismissing the work of African Americans and other POC as somehow less than the work of White people continued throughout the following century, and it’s reflected in how we see our history preserved.