How Designer Cheyney McKnight Honors 19th Century Enslaved And Free African American Women – Essence
Cheyney McKnight says her work as a historical interpreter and researcher led to her path as a designer. McKnight launched Not Your Momma’s History in 2014, where she develops programming and makes videos that educate about slavery and the Black experience, in collaboration with museums, historical sites, and businesses. McKnight is also the Manager of Living History at The New York Historical. McKnight’s designs incorporate techniques and silhouettes perfected by the creativity and skill of African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries but with a modern twist. All of her pieces are made to order.
As a historical interpreter, McKnight dresses in the types of clothing that African Americans, both enslaved and free, wore in the antebellum South, and on through the late 1800s. “I understand the power in the imagery that I’m putting forward, especially through my clothing. But, as a Black woman who started as a reenactor, and transitioned to an interpreter, I was frustrated.” She says she felt that some elements of reenacting were purely to glorify and build a fantasy world, a world where people could step back in time to when Black people were treated like property.
The first experience that drove home the power of the clothing for McKnight was when she and several Black reenactors were portraying free Black people in the town of Gettysburg, Virginia. In one scene, they fled from reenactors dressed in Confederate clothing. “After the event, there were a few parents who were frustrated with us, because they had to have a certain conversation with their kids,” McKnight recalls. “They had to answer their kids when they asked, ‘Why did Miss Cheyney run away from the good guys?’ They had been taught that Confederates were the good guys, and so, for the first time, the parents had to have that conversation.”
McKnight later spent time working at Colonial Williamsburg, where she says that she regularly experienced sexual harassment from male guests. “There was the problematic aspect of older white men harassing young Black women in historical clothing, and I felt extremely uncomfortable at engaging in this work in my ancestors’ actual clothing.”
To avoid being clothed in actual ancestral pieces, and feel more comfortable in the historical garments she needed to wear, McKnight began to modify her look. At first, she decided to reproduce similar clothing to the authentic garments, using historical silhouettes from that time period, but incorporating more modern prints and fabrics. She started with denim, then added West African prints. As she continued to build out her outfits, McKnight’s vision began to stretch beyond dressing only herself. People were often asking about her clothing, and she felt that designing for others was a natural expansion of the work she was already engaging in.
“I wanted there to be meaning in the clothing,” she says. “So, I started researching different fabrics from throughout the diaspora. I came to the conclusion that I really wanted to develop a cultural costume alongside everyday clothing for Black American women that communicates our heritage and our identity to the world.” That led to her creating dresses and tops that pay homage to the design, sewing, and tailoring skills of the ancestors, incorporating bodices, full skirts, and structured sleeves.
McKnight’s designs fall into two categories: Pieces that she makes for descendants of those enslaved at the historical sites she visits, which she gifts to them for free, and made-to-order pieces that she creates for colleagues and private buyers. She tells ESSENCE that she begins by either studying images of original garments, or by going into museum collections to research and look at historical garments. She also has some authentic historical garments, mostly bodices, in her personal collection.
After conducting preliminary research, McKnight then selects fabrics–if she’s going for modern fabric, she says she tends to make interesting, unexpected choices in terms of patterns or textiles. However, if she’s going for a more historically accurate garment she expresses that she looks to specific companies that source materials from all over the world. That way she can come as close as possible to 18th and 19th-century fabrics.
To bring her designs to life, McKnight creates some of them herself, but sometimes also works with select dressmakers and seamstresses who research and specialize in historical designs as she does. But part of McKnight’s research process may come as a surprise: She spends a lot of time studying minstrel shows and blackface memorabilia.
“Part of my job is distinguishing where these style origins are coming from,” she explains. “Minstrel shows, of course, got the music and sometimes the clothing as an offensive exaggeration of the reality of Black folks. But the thing that many people don’t realize is that Black people, many enslaved, then took some of those songs from minstrel shows and reworked them, adding their own flair and soul to them.” Next, she mentions that those reworks got picked back up into the minstrel shows as exaggerations. “So, there’s a blend of sorts, and that’s part of why it’s important to educate people about the origins of American culture, and the cultural exports of America. Because sometimes, people show up dressed as actual minstrel show characters without even realizing it,” she adds.
As we continue to engage in larger conversations about the future of fashion, and what fashion has meant and continues to mean culturally, McKnight’s work can help to contextualize some of these questions. It is empowering to have an understanding of the patterns, cuts, and fabrics that our ancestors created, used, and wore. Clothing can be political, a form of resistance, and a place of freedom. The clothing that our ancestors wore sends a message to us today about craftsmanship, community, innovation, and creativity. McKnight feels that this message should be an ongoing conversation in Black communities, a connection between us and our ancestors.
“I hope that my clothing sparks a desire to better gatekeep the spaces where we mold and nurture our culture,” she says. “Many of my designs for everyday wear are inspired heavily by the clothing of Black women in the 1890s, from all walks of life; from unnamed sharecroppers to portraits of middle class Black families, to Ida B. Wells. Coming off the Reconstruction era, where Black folks saw wins in grabbing seats in Southern state governments and the US Congress, we then entered a time of backlash to the progress, and an even darker period for Black Americans.”
But Black women in that era put on their battle armor when they got dressed in the morning. From their bold shoulders and strong structured bodices, McKnight sees their clothing as a form of resilience. Blending these elements from our ancestors with modern ideas gives a new generation of Black women a chance to clothe themselves in armor that has meaning and a message.
