The History Behind Mary Todd Lincoln's Famous Purple Velvet Dress

Elizabeth Keckley was born in Virginia in 1818, the daughter of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner, Colonel Armistead Burwell, according to the White House Historical Society. Like her mother, she too was enslaved. Her skills as a seamstress and dressmaker helped pay for her freedom and that of her son George in 1855. By the time she moved to Washington, D.C., in 1860, she had made a name for herself in St. Louis where she had been living. Mary Lincoln was already aware of Keckley and her skills from the First Lady’s friends there before their fateful meeting at the White House, per “Behind the Scenes.”

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The purple velvet dress Keckley made for Mary included white satin piping and mother-of-pearl buttons, per the Smithsonian. Mary wore the dress during the important winter social season of 1861 to 1862, during the first year of the Civil War. Like all Keckley’s gowns, it was “pared down and sophisticated,” according to Elizabeth Way, a former Smithsonian researcher. “Her designs tended to be very streamlined,” she told Smithsonian Magazine. “Not a lot of lace or ribbon. A very clean design.”