A postal carrier during the week, Seattle photographer Al Smith (1916-2008) spent weekends taking pictures for his photography business "On The Spot." His photographs tell the stories of everyday people who shaped the dynamic character of Seattle, offering rare views into the city’s Black community, the Central Area neighborhood, and the local jazz scene. Here, Smith photographs a model at a “La Clique Club” fashion show.

MOHAI’s 2022 Curator’s Fellow Brittney Frantece explored the photographs in the Al Smith Collection for how they demonstrate Black worldbuilding in Seattle. Looking at this photograph, Frantece offered the following analysis:

Black worldbuilding treats Black ways of styling hair and attire as phenomena to be honored and respected. Because white beauty standards are often imposed onto Black people and Black culture is often being appropriated by the same people who shun it, celebrating and owning Black ways of defining beauty is a key in building Black worlds.

Smith honored this aspect of Black worldbuilding by the way he photographed Black hair shows, fashion shows, and pageants. Even beyond formal shows, there are many photographs in the collection of Black people posing in their highly stylized outfits for the night outing. This image is testament to this honor: a color photograph of an unidentified woman posing for Clique Club fashion show, circa 1960. She wears an angled pinstripe dress with stripes of different tones of blue and shoulder straps falling off of the shoulders. She sports a popular hair style amongst Black people in the ‘60s, layered tight curls, slightly combed out to make the curls a little looser but kept the volume of layers.