Jacqueline Clay Chester

Black Girl in Moscow, a Memoir Jacqueline Clay Chester

It's not a story you hear very often. An African-American college student from Brooklyn, New York - with Georgia roots and Jim Crow experiences - traveling to Moscow, Russia during the Cold War to "rip the runway" Atlanta-based author and playwright Jacqueline Clay Chester, spent seven weeks in Russia as a runway model for the American National Exhibition in Moscow. The exhibition presented thousands of Russians with a glimpse of life in the United States through exhibits and daily fashion shows featuring American fashions and Western themes. An apparel design major at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, Ms. Chester was the only FIT student to participate, and only one of three African-American models. Her mother, from rural Georgia, was reluctant to tell the family because they would have advised against such a trip. Ms. Chester's book, Black Girl in Moscow, A Memoir, speaks about the experience of going to Russia during the Cold War and like the opening of the Russian Matrovskia doll, the memories unfold, one after the other!