Remembering Ann Lowe, the Black Fashion Designer Who Made Jackie Kennedy's Wedding Dress
Perhaps you’ve heard murmurs about the 1950s couturier Ann Lowe, but it's likely you haven’t. Historical analysis and pop culture recollection of mid-1900s fashion encircle designers like Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain, and Coco Chanel, but not Lowe. The Black designer was responsible for generations of New York City socialite fashion and the ever iconic wedding dress of Jaqeuline Bouvier for her 1953 marriage to future President John F. Kennedy. Still, Lowe to this day is left out of conversations about the styles of her time and despite being one of the most sought-after creators did not benefit enough financially to ground a legacy fashion house.
Ten days before the wedding of Bouvier, there was a flood in Lowe’s Madison Avenue studio, destroying two months’ worth of work and the future First Lady’s wedding dress. Lowe hired extra assistance, purchased new fabrics, and reconstructed the embroidered lace and ivory silk-taffeta gown at her own cost of about $2,200 (about $21,000 in today’s dollars). But when she arrived at the wedding to hand deliver the nuptial gown and bridesmaid dresses she’d made, Lowe was barred from entering through the front door (lest she be seen). Instructed to take the back entrance, Lowe countered that she would “take the dresses back,” according to the Smithsonian if she wasn’t allowed to walk in the front, and went right in.
After the Kennedy’s had married and questions began raining down as to who had designed the now iconic garment, Mrs. Kennedy answered only that, “a colored dressmaker did it.” Thus Lowe was robbed of any public accreditation or even proper financial compensation for her work, and this was far from the only time a commission had or would result this way.
“Society’s best kept secret'' was how the Saturday Evening Post referred to Lowe in 1964, and that she was. With clients like the DuPonts, Roosevelts, Posts, Biddles, Rockefellers, and Auchinclosses (the family which Janet Lee Bouvier, Jackie's mother, married into upon her third marriage) you would think her name would be well known.
And in fact Lowe’s name did appear in the National Social Directory of 1966, an 800 page book listing noteworthy individuals and families for their accomplishments and “dignity of their way of life.” She could also be found in a 1966 copy of Who’s Who of American Women. “I am an awful snob,” Lowe told Ebony magazine in a six page spread they published on her in 1966. “I love my clothes and I am particular about who wears them. I am not interested in sewing for cafe society or social climbers. I do not cater to Mary and Sue. I sew for the families of the Social Register,'' Lowe said.
Preserved pieces of the designer’s work attest to these statements. A 1967 gown currently held at The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC and donated by Pauline "Polly" Carver Duxbury was made by Lowe for Duxbury's debutante ball. "I was 17 years old at the time and the dress made me feel so grown up and beautiful," Duxbury said in a written statement taken by the Smithsonian. Duxbury’s silken silver dress with its hunter green and fuschia rose extrusions is exemplary of Lowe’s hand. Similar rose-shaped ornaments flower the skirts of a white silk crepe gown fitted princess-style with a five-gore skirt donated to The Museum of New York City after being worn to the International Debutante Ball at the Grand Ballroom of Waldorf Astoria, in December of 1964.
The fabricated flowers that adorned these dresses and many of Lowe’s creations were inspired by the days of her childhood spent folding her mother’s seamstressing scraps into roses. Born in Clayton, Alabama in 1898, Lowe came from a family of seamstresses. Her grandmother, Georgia Cole, was an enslaved dressmaker for her plantation mistress before she was freed in 1860, and her mother, Jane Lowe, specialized in embroidery. National Museum of American History Curator Emeritus Nancy Davis has said, "She learned from them. She was really gifted, but she was also part of this lineage of seamstresses... and really capable ones." Georgia and Jane sewed for the first families of Montgomery, and Ann spent much of her childhood at the foot of their sewing tables, piecing together what would become her signature floral adornment. When Ann was 16 years old, her mother passed away, leaving behind four unfinished ball gowns for the First Lady of Alabama. A young Ann finished the gowns, and from them her passion for high society design sprang.
Three years seamstressing in Alabama later and Lowe had acquired a reputation and portfolio worthy of an acceptance to New York’s S.T. Taylor Design School. She began classes in 1917, but as the only Black student in the school (a fact unbeknownst to the administration until she arrived) Lowe was segregated from other students, entirely isolated throughout the course of her studies. This treatment did not deter her though, and immediately following graduation she became the head of a leading Tampa, Florida dress shop where she saved $20,000 before moving back to NYC in 1927 to open the first of three NYC locations. The first was in Harlem and called Ann Lowe’s Gowns, for Manhattan’s social elite.
News of her exquisite sartorial skills spread across the city, but so did the fact that Lowe charged close to nothing for custom work. A client of Lowe’s told Ebony magazine in 1966, “Lowe dresses are worth more than they cost. They are works of art, timeless, feminine, beautiful, always the most flattering gown a woman could choose.” Lowe may have been leading her dream of fashioning society’s crème de la crème, but her own position within society as a Black woman made it easy for those same wealthy clients to take advantage of her, much like in the case of Kennedy’s wedding dress. Other American fashion houses such as Chez Ninon, the label that created line-for-line recreations of French designer looks for Kennedy, were a widely-known beacon of couture. The First Lady's patronage made its Upper East Side salon a beacon of couture, and its founders, Nona McAdoo Park and Sophie Meldrim Shonnard, were seen amidst their high-profile clients at fashion shows. Lowe, however, did not get the same acknowledgement or invitations.
Lowe undercharged, customers underpaid, and her name was removed from conversations about her own work. Actress Olivia De Havilland wore an Ann Lowe gown to accept her Oscar for Best Actress in the film To Each His Own in 1947, and like many of Lowes clients, removed the back interior name tag demarcating it as a Lowe dress before wearing it to the awards ceremony. But Lowe never complained. She was more interested in the creation of her clothes, knowing who wore them, and where, than she was in making a profit.
In 1958, Lowe’s son and business partner passed away in a car accident and she was left with no one to keep her books. Within a year Lowe racked up $4,000 in debt, had difficulty making ends meet, and ultimately declared bankruptcy in 1962. An anonymous benefactor, thought to be Jacqueline Kennedy, paid off Lowe's debts, but her work spaces had been forfeited and she had to work out of a small space offered to her by Saks, which was hoping to lure her white-collar clients into its stores.
Within fashion historical societies, and academic design settings Lowe is now recognized as a pioneering African-American couturier. Her pieces are preserved in renowned museum collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, The Cincinnati Art Museum, and The Museum at FIT. However, she is still unknown to many who are familiar with her white counterparts of the 1930s-'80s who established lasting fashion houses that continue to thrive today like Chanel, Dior, and Balmain. Because unlike her competitors, Lowe was undervalued and unable to build a sustainable business due to the descrimination of the times in which she designed. Today, it is vital we remember not only her work, but the detriment racial prejudice had on it, so that we never lose a maison like Lowe’s again.
