Ann Lowe was the first African American fashion designer of haute couture. She is best known for making Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding gown and the gowns for her bridesmaids; Kennedy’s mother was also a frequent client. Lowe was only able to make a limited number of gowns each year, and she was very selective about the people she worked with: “I'm not interested in sewing for café society or social climbers. I do not cater to Mary and Sue. I sew for the families of the Social Register.”
According to Lowe’s own chronology, documented later in her life, she was born in Clayton, Alabama, in 1898, but the 1910 census shows that she was twenty-one and married by that time. Her grandmother was a enslaved mixed-race woman whose freedom was purchased by Lowe’s her grandfather; he was later murdered in a white supremacist mob attack on Black voters in Barbour County, Alabama, of which Clayton is the seat. Lowe dropped out of her segregated school at age fourteen and learned how to make dresses from her mother and grandmother, who were both dressmakers in Montgomery. Her husband did not want her to work, but in 1914 Lowe’s mother died and she went to Montgomery to finish four gowns for the wife of the state’s governor. While there she rediscovered her love of dressmaking and the independence that came with having her own vocation.
Two years later, Lowe left her husband and relocated to Tampa, living with her son in the servant’s quarters of the home of a wealthy white woman. In 1917 the woman’s family sent her to the Manhattan dressmaking school of S. T. Taylor to elevate her skills and learn to make high-fashion gowns, but Lowe left after a few months, having impressed the teacher with her superior talent. During this time she worked as an in-house seamstress at Saks Fifth Avenue. Lowe returned to Tampa and stayed for an additional decade, remarried, and launched her own business. She relocated to New York in 1928 so that she could afford her own shop since she was unable to get a loan in the Jim Crow South.
Lowe was most actively making her original gowns in the 1950s, and she owned salons on Madison Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side while living in Harlem. She operated a successful fashion line but undercharged for her gowns and therefore experienced financial difficulties. Lowe lost her shop, Ann Lowe’s Originals, in 1962 because she owed $12,800 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, but an “anonymous friend,” likely Jacqueline Kennedy, made the tax payment, which allowed her to reopen. In 1963 Lowe lost one of her eyes to glaucoma, and in 1964 she had cataracts removed from her other eye. When the cataracts returned, she began dictating her designs to assistants and a sketch artist to bring them to life.
Lowe retired in 1969 and moved to Queens in New York City to live with Ruth Alexander, her former assistant, whom she considered an “adopted daughter.” Lowe died there on February 25, 1981.
References
Alleyne, Allyssia. 2020. “ The Untold Story of the Black Designer Behind Jackie Kennedy’s Wedding Dress. CNN. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ann-lowe-jackie-kennedy-wedding-dress/index.html.
Laneri, Raquel. 2016. “Why Jackie Kennedy’s Wedding Dress Designer Was Fashion’s ‘Best Kept Secret.’” New York Post. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://nypost.com/2016/10/16/jackies-wedding-dress-designer-is-finally-recognized/.
Phelps, Timothy M. 1981. “Anne Lowe, 82, Designed Gowns for Exclusive Clientele in Society.” New York Times. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/01/obituaries/ann-lowe-82-designed-gowns-for-exclusive-clientele-in-society.html.
Thurman, Judith. 2021. “Ann Lowe’s Barrier-Breaking Mid-Century Couture: How a Black Designer Made Her Way Among the White Élite.” The New Yorker. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/ann-lowes-barrier-breaking-mid-century-couture.
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