In 1949, Christian Dior made Dorothea Towles Church the first Black model in Paris haute couture, forcing Black American elegance into global white luxury.
At Atlanta’s SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, the National Black Arts Festival co-hosted “Black Beauty in Post-War Paris” alongside the museum’s Dior: Crafting Fashion exhibition. I shared the stage with Danny Dunson of Chicago’s DuSable Black History Museum in a panel moderated by SCAD FASH’s Alex Delotch Davis. Together, we examined how Church breached haute couture and introduced French fashion directly to Black Americans.
Born in 1922 in Texarkana, Texas, Dorothea Towles Church grew up in a “Jim Crow middle class” household that prioritized education. She graduated cum laude from Wiley College with a degree in biology and pre-med, then taught high school in Los Angeles before becoming the first Black student admitted to the Dorothy Farrier Charm and Modeling School.
In 1949, she bought a $300 ticket on a cargo flight to Paris to accompany her pianist sister on a Fisk University concert tour. Not long after landing, she sold the return ticket and informed her dentist husband that she was not returning to California. Christian Dior hired her on sight. For five years, she worked as a primary muse for Dior and a mannequin for Elsa Schiaparelli during the designer’s wildly creative last years. She was also a top model for Pierre Balmain. He requested that she dye her black hair platinum blonde because he wanted to create a dramatic contrast.
She appears on the cover of JET’s August 28, 1952, issue, with the headline “How To Become a Paris Model” and her blonde tresses intact. “This is a racy cover,” Dunson said. “It has edge, sex…
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