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She calls it her Gingerbread House.

This is the last in the series, Making of the Anna Murray Douglass dress. The dress was created from a plum silk taffeta. I machine quilted the center front and then beaded with garnet beads. Although I sewed the majority of the dress on the sewing machine, my thoughts is that the dress in it's time period, would have been made by hand. I didn't have that kind of time. Link in bio for other videos in this series Anna Murray Douglass    It was such a beautiful event. Ms. Lana Turner planned this event in a short period, but the real miracle was how she met Michelle V. Agins from the New York Times. At a party they met...

I am lucky....I have been blessed to have been photographed by a Pulitzer Prize and Lucie Award Photojournalist, NY Times. ....and even luckier to attend this incredible awards ceremony, here is my perspective from the balcony. The Lucie Awards is the premiere annual event honoring the greatest achievements in photography https://lucies.org/. This night was Michelle V. Agins (https://www.nytimes.com/by/michelle-v... ) night to shine. She was being honored for her Achievements in Photojournalism. Also in the mix was William Pickney (https://bit.ly/3W4CoM5), the first African American, and only the fourth person in the world to circumnavigate the globe alone by boat. The next night, Mystic Seaport Museum to Honor William Pinkney with the America and the Sea Award. Music: Epidemic Sound, Matt Large/...

Did you know where that phrase came from, Kwame Brathwaite.  On January 28, 1962, with his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite staged the Naturally '62 pageant, the first of a series of pageants to feature only black models. The 1962 pageant has the title The Original African Coiffure and Fashion Extravaganza Designed to Restore Our Racial Pride & Standards. Held at the Harlem Purple Manor, a nightclub on East 125th Street, it helped to popularize the phrase Black Is Beautiful that was printed on the pageant's poster. The Naturally pageants ran for five years, with the last one held in 1966. Wikipedia October 25th, 2022, the Lucie Awards Honored Kwame Brathwaite, with Achievements in Portraiture.

At first I thought I would just buy a corset to wear under the dress, but then quickly changed my mind. I wanted to get the full effect of what Mrs. Douglass might of felt like on that day. I knew that an 19th century woman may have worn some type of corset/stay under the dress, but needed to find out which she might have worn in that time. My research turned up a Stay. I found this from a website called The Dreamstress: The term stays probably comes from the French estayer: to support, because that is exactly what stays did. Stays turned the torso into a stiff, inverted cone, raising and supporting the bust, and providing a solid...