Ann Lowe

Ann Lowe

Source: Anthology - Ann Lowe: Society’s best-kept secret

Ann Lowe (1898-1981) was a gifted fashion designer who created luxurious debutante ball gowns, wedding dresses, and other formal attire for the social elite. Though she was often underpaid and uncredited during her lifetime, likely because she was an African American, her wealthy clients appreciated her beautiful designs (frequently with floral motifs) and the extremely high quality of her couture work. 

Born in Alabama as the daughter and granddaughter of talented dressmakers, Lowe began sewing and designing as a young child. When her mother died in 1914, Lowe finished the four dresses her mother had been working on, including one for the first lady of Alabama, and thus established herself as a skilled dressmaker.

In 1916 she encountered a Tampa socialite who admired her outfit and invited her to move to Florida as a live-in dressmaker. She attended S.T. Taylor Design School in New York City in 1917, where she was segregated from the other students due to her race but outshone them with the quality of her work. After finishing the program, she returned to Tampa and opened the Annie Cone boutique, hiring and training several seamstresses to assist her.  

Ann Lowe

Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture - Ann Lowe

Lowe moved to New York City in 1928 and initially struggled, in part due to the start of the Great Depression in 1929. During this time she worked for other fashion houses, including Hattie Carnegie. By the early 1950s, though, she had opened Ann Lowe, Inc. on Madison Avenue – the first African American to have a shop on the famous street – and she operated several stores in the city in succession over the next two decades. Her gowns appeared in luxury stores like Neiman Marcus and were featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair.  

Her most famous commission was creating the wedding dress and all the bridal party dresses for Jacqueline Bouvier’s 1953 wedding to John F. Kennedy. Janet Auchincloss, the bride's mother, chose Lowe as the designer; Lowe had designed several dresses for Auchincloss and her daughters since 1942. However, a flood in Lowe's workshop shortly before the wedding destroyed most of the dresses, which Lowe recreated at a loss, and as often happened with her work, she was not credited as the designer.  

Book cover: Ann Lowe: American Couturier

For the rest of her career Lowe alternated between shops she owned, other couture salons, and Saks Fifth Avenue’s The Adam Room. Her son managed her business affairs until his death in 1958, as Lowe was not a businesswoman. After he died she frequently experienced financial problems, in part because both Saks and various clients underpaid her substantially for her work. She experienced vision problems later in life, including having her right eye removed in 1962 due to glaucoma and receiving an operation to remove cataracts in her left eye. She retired in 1972 due to diminishing eyesight, moved in with an adoptive daughter in Queens, and died in 1981.

Given how rarely Lowe was publicly credited, determining which items she made can be challenging. The Mount Mary Fashion Archive contains 5 garments believed to be Ann Lowe creations, all shown below. The wedding dress, green ball gown, and pink evening gown all have very distinctive bodice construction - an Ann Lowe signature. Other notable details include the blue ribbons on the wedding dress petticoat (Lowe liked to add a "something blue" for her brides), the bows along the back of the wedding dress that individually snap shut, the appliqué fabric flowers on the green ball gown, the little lace butterflies sewn onto the green ball gown petticoat, and the lace that lines the interior seams. Furthermore, the donor of the wedding dress identified it as being made by Lowe, and the green ball gown and pink evening gown have "Saks Fifth Avenue Adam Room" labels, where Ann Lowe was known to work in the early 1960s. The evening coat was also identified by the donor as being made by Lowe, and though it doesn't have details identifying it as a Lowe piece, it is very well made, and Lowe did occasionally make long evening coats. The creator of the brown evening gown is less certain, but it has the same lace lining the interior seams, a signature finishing technique frequently used by Lowe, and the stripes in the sari fabric are perfectly matched - even on the inside.

To learn more, check out Ann Lowe: American Couturier at Haggerty Library. Additional online resources include the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s article on Ann Lowe and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s article on Ann Lowe.