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 rarce 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 fashions 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 all of the bridal party dresses for Jacqueline Bouvier’s 1953 wedding to John F. Kennedy. However, a flood in her 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.

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.