✨️ Vintage Black Expo ✨️

Street Stories: Fashion as Living Memory in Black Baltimore

Street Stories is a four-part immersive, fashion-centered public art installation series that brings Black Baltimore’s history to life. Each month, we’ll activate a new historical location with a curated fashion tableau--full-scale designed scenes using vintage and repurposed garments, archival props, live models, and soundscapes to add to the atmosphere. Guests can view the live scenes, take photos at the historic sites and hear from local experts and historian. Guests can also scan the QR codes to hear the oral histories of citizens and spiritual music during this period or view archival photographs and artwork of the era. Each installation blends vintage fashion with Black historical storytelling, using relics and replicas, and digital zines to guide audiences through moments often erased or overlooked.

Our first location will be the Malachi Mills House located at 1504 W. Baltimore St. in Hollins Market. We will honor the craftsmanship and legacy of its builder—a free Black carpenter in the 1840s—one of the first freed Black people to own property in Baltimore City. The display will include period-inspired vintage garments like linen trousers, long coats, vests, high-neck blouses, work aprons, and carpenter’s tools arranged on live models and seating vignettes that recreate a domestic scene. Future sites include Douglass Row (516-524 S. Dallas St. in Fells Point), which are homes built by abolitionist Fredrick Douglass; Provident Hospital (1514 Division St.), one of the first hospitals founded by Black doctors after the Civil War in Baltimore; The Afro-American Newspaper HQ (2519 N. Charles St.), and President Street Station, which was a critical stop in the Underground Railroad route to freedom for enslaved Africans.

Street Stories reimagines historical Black sites as vivid open-air galleries where fashion becomes a tool for education, connection, and city pride. This project. is rooted in community, powered by creativity, and designed to move people.

Source: Preservation Maryland

This Street Stories project is expected to take 2 months to come together and has been broken up into 4 phases lasting about 2 weeks. The first phase includes finalizing the connecting thread between the 4 locations, assembling the production team, gathering permits, researching the audio and images, and publicly announcing the project. The second phase includes gathering, recording, digitally archiving and editing audio and images, gathering behind-the-scenes content for promotion. The third phase includes storyboarding the wardrobe styling, set design visuals, scriptwriting, and establishing the digital backend. The final phase includes the installation and activation at Malachi Mills House, capturing professional photography and community reflections, creating live and UGC content (reels, carousel posts, stories etc.), then priming and prepping the next month’s site.

Baltimore has a deep, complex, and often forgotten history when it comes to Black residents. The Street Stories project provides visibility for some of the overlooked historical sites inhabited by and contributions of Black Baltimoreans by turning public spaces into non-traditional art and cultural portals. The project brings history to life, connects the past to the present, and gives residents and visitors an innovative way to engage with Baltimore’s Black legacy through sight, style, and sound. 

Visually, it creates a bold yet beautiful juxtaposition of the duality of Baltimore--old and new, dilapidated and reimagined, dark and lovely--that will open dialogue and discovery. This project provides economic growth opportunities to local creatives, brings new tourism and travel experiences, invites collaboration, and creates new memories for Baltimore’s future. Not only does it build civic pride, and strengthens neighborhood identity, it reframes history as something tangible to be seen, felt, and heard. 

Source: Southwest Partnership

I’m a vintage fashion retailer, event curator, and cultural community builder. I’m the owner of Tightfisted Fashion and the creator behind the Vintage Black Expo—two platforms intersecting Black style, sustainability, and storytelling. Born and raised in Baltimore, I’ve spent over a decade building experiences and platforms that provide economic empowerment while creating spaces where people can connect, share, and grow together. I also use fashion, art, and history to create opportunities for Black-owned businesses, creatives, and visionaries across the African Diaspora. Through vintage and upcycled clothing, I not only tell our stories, but also create new visuals to add to the canon of Black history.

For 10 years I ran a brick-and-mortar vintage clothing store in the heart of Station North where I worked with art and community organizations like the Station North Arts District, CLLVTILY, and The Eubie Blake Center to produce sidewalk fashion shows, pop-ups, food and clothing giveaways, open mics, workshops and more to engage the local community. That work continues through the Vintage Black Expo and other initiatives, where I have consistently created opportunities for Black artists, entrepreneurs, and residents to connect and thrive. What started as a gathering of fashion lovers, the Vintage Black Expo has expanded into a vibrant marketplace, filled with commerce, community, music, art, and collaboration.