
An Endowment of Black Glamour
In a time when we have more access than ever before to the traumas of this world, how will you resist the tide of despair? Let beauty be your anchor.
- Cole Arthur Riley
Introducing…
Under the creative direction of Atelier Lincoln, The Conservatory is a society offering deep study into the intellects and aesthetics of Black Glamour. Through carefully selected readings, archival materials, and intimate gatherings, we study the lives of Black women who used glamour not just as appearance but as strategy, brilliance, and inheritance.
The curious scholar, collector, or dreamer who prefers to experience the Conservatory at your own pace from anywhere in the world.
The Curricula of Black Glamour…
We follow a public learning model. One that honors both the scholar and the self-taught. Our structure draws inspiration from the quiet, determination of those who came before us. The secret societies. The beauty parlors. The kitchen tables. The archives held together in memory by shoeboxes, photo albums, paper and scriptures.
1. The Expositions
Each Exposition (think season) is a restorative deep dive into Black Glamour. First, we’ll start by reading three to four carefully selected titles, each exploring a different guise of Glamour. Then we’ll gather for the transformation of being made whole by the glamour.
2. The Glamour Repertoire
This is your digital archive. A curated companion for each book. It’s repository of vintage archives, playlists, literature, and ephemera
3. The Intermissions
One-month intermission between titles to pause, process, and reflect. Exclusive video interviews, short audio reflections, and open prompts for rest, reflection, and connection.
GLAMOUR NOTES FOR THE ARCHIVE
The practice of beholding this fidelity to beauty in all things, I’ve come to believe is no small form of salvation
Create Your Own Curricula of Glamour.
Build your own archive. In addition to the study, we create collections of stationary with vintage motifs and designs. Each item becomes is a tactile part of the Repertoire. A meaningful way to carry Glamour into your everyday.
Write a note to yourself to remind you of your glamour, or share a moment of gratitude to someone else. Make sure to pair it with your favorite color to compliment your repertoire.
Glamour Deserves Gratitude
The shop is our love letter. To the women who came before us, the rituals that shaped us, and the grace we carry forward in their honor.
Glamour is not frivolous. It is a form of memory, reverence, and beauty. This shop is our offering in return.
Get to Know Me
You may also know me as @theglamourarchivist. I’m the founder of Atelier Lincoln a way of life, a study, and a living endowment. Through it, I honor our experience through the lens of Vintage Black Glamour not as costume, but as strategy for survival.
For a long time, glamour felt distant. Something reserved, unobtainable and an elite offering only for special ones. But even as a child, I knew Black Glamour was real. I saw it in my grandmother: in the way she groomed herself each morning, even when her life gave her every reason not to. The lipstick. The curling iron. The nail polish. I wore plastic high heels and princess tiaras, sensing that I, too, would become something beautiful. But I didn’t yet know what or why.
That knowing came later through years of study, through collecting fragments, through the slow realization that glamour was more than aesthetic. It was an archive. A refuge. A language. Atelier Lincoln became the place where that language lives: in paper, in our conservatory, and in the quiet invitation to honor ourselves daily.
The Glamour Notes I write and leave around my home are messages from a past self to a future one. Reminders that glamour isn’t reserved for the privileged or the perfect. It’s an inheritance already inside you, waiting to be acknowledged through glamour and gratitude.