The Fabulous Fashion of Eunice W. Johnson

Eunice Walker Johnson never rushed the process of getting dressed.

She began her days in her immense closet, rifling through racks of clothing by Pierre Cardin, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent—all the de rigueur couturiers of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. For her, deciding what to wear was an opportunity to express her confident personality and refined taste, and she often gravitated toward bold, elegant ensembles.

Johnson’s passion for fashion was the driving force behind the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC), publisher of Ebony, Jet, and other popular magazines—and the largest Black-owned company in the United States until the turn of the millennium. Johnson, a trailblazing African American businesswoman, philanthropist, and cultural icon, cofounded JPC with her husband, John H. Johnson. She served as Ebony’s fashion editor and also chose its name. Ebony is “the most beautiful black, dark wood from Africa,” according to her daughter, Linda Johnson Rice. Ebony debuted in 1945 and was explicitly designed to cover African American news, culture, and entertainment for Black audiences every month.

Black glamour hits the runway

Born in 1916 to a surgeon and schoolteacher in Selma, Alabama, Johnson brought to her work an appreciation for fashion, travel, and education that her affluent family had instilled in her early on.

In 1958 she created the Ebony Fashion Fair, an innovative traveling fashion show that was radical in its promotion of Black glamour as a birthright. A hit from the start, the annual event began as a charity fundraiser for the Flint-Goodridge Hospital of New Orleans’s Dillard University; a modest 10 shows were produced across the country. “There was an opening for this because there was nothing like it for Black people,” says Johnson Rice. “My mother wanted to showcase the most beautiful designs on the most gorgeous Black people, to show that Black people can wear anything, and that we deserve this. Our culture has always been one of being proud of who we are.”

At its apex, Ebony Fashion Fair traveled to 109 cities per year, including stops in Canada, the Bahamas, and Jamaica, and eventually raised approximately $55 million for African American organizations. Johnson curated the garments, selected the models, and served as producer-director of the show starting in 1961. That meant it was on the road for nearly nine months and that the cast of models and commentators—along with a crew of wardrobe mistresses and a musical director—had to travel by Greyhound bus. “It was like a rock star road show,” Johnson Rice says. “People were waiting for that bus to come in because they knew it was going to be a fantastic production.”

Johnson was not only a fashionista but also an entrepreneur with an aptitude for marketing, and she saw the show as a promotional tool and platform for brand expansion. Much like magazines are vehicles for advertisements, the Ebony Fashion Fair was an opportunity to sell subscriptions to Ebony and Jet, and later, to merchandise Fashion Fair Cosmetics. After watching models backstage mix foundation shades to match their skin tones, Johnson was struck with the idea to create a beauty company that would address the lack of products for darker skin. Soon after, she launched a cosmetics line in London and made it available worldwide, predating the many diverse shade ranges popular today.

Only the best couture

Johnson’s style-soaked editorials introduced readers to the notable European designs she would purchase straight off the runway during her buying trips abroad. She was both introducing American audiences to global fashion and constantly introducing the world to Ebony. “We had to take the magazine with us in our hands to every single showroom we went to,” says Johnson Rice.

On these visits to London, Rome, Paris, and Milan, Johnson brought her checkbook to the fashion shows and showrooms of haute couture designers, including Christian Dior, Ungaro, Courrèges, and Givenchy, whose gowns sold for as much as $50,000. “She was one of the single largest couture buyers of her era,” says Johnson Rice. Johnson was committed to quality, but she was also a canny consumer and knew when she was being mistreated. Once, when a staff member of a major designer quoted an amount for a gown that was higher than its listed price, Johnson promptly returned her checkbook to her purse and took her business elsewhere.

Johnson had been deemed valuable (read: wealthy) enough to sit front row, but she still had to navigate the elitism of the fashion industry. As Johnson Rice remembers, her mother had to work assiduously to prove that Black people were worthy of being seen in the finest fashion, and that they were essential voices in conversations on art and style.

“As glamorous and incredible as the fashion shows were in the fashion capitals of the world, I think for my mother it was also lonely,” adds Johnson Rice. “It took decades before she was invited to their parties. It took several years before she got a front row seat. But the reason she got that front row seat was because she was bringing that front row check.” Johnson Rice describes her mother as a “steel magnolia,” the term for Southern women possessing both softness and inner strength, as many Black women of Johnson’s era were—or felt they had to be.

Creating a Black fashion world

During the late 1950s through 2000, Johnson not only penned articles for Ebony every month but also produced photo shoots abroad—scouting locations and Black models, buying the clothes, and hiring photographers. She then brought the film back to Chicago to print and publish. Every part of the production process was under her control, and she created opportunities for Black people at a time when courting mainstream approval would have been safer.

Many of the models and designers Johnson hired were often undiscovered talents. The careers of supermodel Pat Cleveland and actor Richard Roundtree, among others, began on the Fashion Fair runways. “We were the ones who convinced Valentino to use Black models in his shows back in the ’60s,” Johnson told the New York Times in 2001. “I was in Paris, and I told him: ‘If you can’t find any Black models, we’ll get some for you. And if you can’t use them, we’re not going to buy from you anymore.’”

Johnson also worked closely with Black American designers, including Stephen Burrows, Scott Barrie, Patrick Kelly, Willi Smith, and Jeffrey Banks. She would invite young Black designers to submit sketches to her JPC office via mail, comb through every single one, and invite her favorite candidates to showcase their work in person. Somewhat infamously, she would turn clothes inside out to analyze the quality of the stitching—she was a talented seamstress herself.

As a businesswoman and Chicago socialite, Johnson was involved in several Black organizations and consistently used her class privilege to help expand the worldview and promote the excellence of the Black community, which had long been up against dominant American media narratives and stereotypes that belied the beauty and cultural trailblazing of the African diaspora throughout time. “My parents always wanted to be able to uplift, enlighten, and elevate Black people,” Johnson Rice says. “To be able to make Black people’s lives better and show them another way of life was in her DNA. She loved beautiful things—but they also had culture and depth to them.”

Far from being superficial, Johnson’s centering of beauty and fashion in her work documenting Black life can be considered a subtly radical political stance, tastefully done in a way that was nonintimidating to her counterparts. For Johnson, dressing well was deeper than simply looking good, Johnson Rice says; she intentionally signaled an investment in self.

With Ebony magazine, Ebony Fashion Fair, Fashion Fair Cosmetics, and her myriad other pursuits, Johnson created worlds for Black people where they were always welcome, embraced, and destined to be.