Wearing a favorite outfit can be a good way to feel confident, but sometimes you've gotta try out some new styles, right? Find that favorite.
That's what fashion designer, Amanda Wicker is all about. She designed clothes that made people feel their very best and then encouraged others to do the same.
Ideastream Public Media's Carrie Wise has a look back at Amanda Wicker's life in this week’s Sketchbook, check it out!
Read the script:
[Carrie] When Amanda Wicker moves to Cleveland nearly a century ago, she put her education to work. Having studied teaching and sewing, she started her own business out of her home, training others in dressmaking.
[Regennia] And she's launching this business in basically, what is the era of the Great Depression. That's when her business is taking off.
- She started out with a business in her home with a single client, teaching them how to sew and turned it into this huge school that taught teenagers, adults, she taught high fashion design couture techniques, but also if you wanted to be trained in garment industry factory work, she could train you on machines that way too.
[Carrie] Wicker moved her business out of her home and established the school at East 89th Street & Cedar Avenue in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood. For decades, Wicker celebrated Cleveland's black fashion scene with annual shows. The large-scale events featured models wearing the latest designs, live entertainment and scholarship awards for students.
[Patty] She called her fashion shows the Book of Gold and you'd get a program with a gold cover, and it was a sort of part graduation ceremony for students, and then part just a way for locals to display their work because the fashion shows were kind of a mix of student work, Amanda Wicker work, but also they would bring in local milliners to showcase their hats on the models.
[Carrie] Wicker designed clothes throughout her life from wedding dresses to suits and evening wear. More than a dozen of those creations as well as her photograph collection were donated by her niece to the Western Reserve Historical society. Those photos and designs live on in a display now on view at the Cleveland History Center.
- I think like playful is a good word for her style. So fun, a little bit of sparkle sometimes, fun silhouette.
[Carrie] Wicker also had a talent for helping the community look its best. She was an active member of Antioch Baptist Church and the Cleveland NAACP. She taught her trade for more than 50 years until selling her school and retiring in the late 1970s.
- I think a lot of people don't necessarily think that teaching someone sewing is a form of activism, but it can give you a skill to become something different. It can help support a community.
- The freedom of expression, I would have to say associated with fashion design and dressmaking, I think that's something that black women in particular came to appreciate in the years following the end of the civil war and certainly something that Amanda Wicker was the expert on and she taught other people to express themselves in excellent ways.
