An early 20th-century dress by Fannie Criss Payne that will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Photo by Michael Simon courtesy The Valentine)
This month, rare dresses designed by Fannie Criss Payne White, a daughter of former slaves from Cumberland County, form part of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” runs May 7-Sept. 5.
The inclusion is fitting, since Payne’s abilities took her from Richmond’s Jackson Ward to Manhattan’s Harlem.
Fannie Criss came to Richmond following her 1895 marriage to William Thornton Payne. A 1900 directory lists their Jackson Ward residence as 1012 W. Leigh St.
Fannie Criss Payne built her reputation creating garments for both Black and white clients.
When Kristen E. Stewart, The Valentine’s curator of costumes and textiles, undertook research for the 2018-19 Valentine exhibition “Pretty Powerful: Fashion and Virginia Women,” she made a discovery. A sophisticated day dress of lightweight cream wool made for Ellen Scott Clarke Wallace was attributed to Fannie Criss, described as a “well-known colored dressmaker of Richmond.” That garment held no label, and the file, Stewart recalls, contained nothing further regarding “this mysterious but clearly very talented dressmaker.”
Stewart in April 2019 addressed the annual Costume Society of America conference in Seattle, emphasizing Fannie Criss Payne as a unique example of a Black dressmaker from the early 20th century. From this, Elizabeth Way, an associate curator for The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, asked Stewart to contribute a chapter on the Richmond dressmaker to a book she was editing, “Black Designers in American Fashion.”
Stewart’s research, and the differences of reference to Payne’s married names, led her to three more dresses in the Valentine collection. Silk twill waist tapes include the maker’s name: “Payne.”
None of Payne’s business records survive, though employee Lucy Ann Jackson Foster listed at least 54 wealthy white and commercially successful immigrants who commissioned Payne. The brass-plate surnames include those of Branch, Bryan, Ellyson, Nolting — and Valentine.
The garments at the Met are examples of early 20th-century afternoon wear, Stewart says. All four are cream or ivory, including an afternoon lingerie-style reception garment for hostess Laura Roy Ellerson Massie, wife of lawyer and legislator Eugene C. Massie.
Referrals built Payne’s client base rather than advertising. In a 1904 issue of The Voice of the Negro, writer William Patrick Burrell refers to Payne as the “finest dressmaker in Richmond, regardless of color”:
“She employs eight girls regularly and her business amounts to more than $8,000 a year. ... A few years ago Mrs. Payne was a day cooker, earning one fifty cents [sic] a day. Her dresses may now be seen at the most prominent watering places of the country [summer resorts] and give the same satisfaction as many that are imported at a great cost.”
Payne seems to have made the 1905 purchase of a two-story brick house at 219 W. Leigh St. in Jackson Ward by herself. She divorced her husband and married restaurant worker William T. White. An increase in race-based restrictions hemmed in their ambitions and hastened their departure to New York City.
As Mrs. W.T. White in New York, she received consistent mention in social whirl columns while her husband’s hospitality business ambitions took them to the West Virginia resort of White Sulphur Springs and to St. Augustine, Florida.
In the 1920 and 1930 federal censuses, she indicated a continuing career in fashion by describing her profession as “modiste.” This distinguished her, says Stewart, as “a creative professional in the language of the modern market.”
The Depression and World War II altered fashion. Fannie Criss Payne White was in her 80s by the time of her February 1942 death. At present, no examples of her New York creations are known.
Stewart says, “My hope is that once these dresses go on exhibit at the Met, where they’ll be seen by many people, someone will recognize the name of Fannie Criss Payne White and realize what’s in Grandmother’s closet.”
