Women In History Month Spotlighting Black women
Meet Ann Cole Lowe.
(1898 – February 25, 1981) was the nation’s first widely recognized African American Fashion Designer.
Born in Clayton, Alabama, the great granddaughter of an enslaved Black woman and an Alabama plantation owner, Lowe's interest in fashion, sewing and designing came from her mother and grandmother, both of whom worked as Seamstresses for the affluent White families of Montgomery.
Lowe's mother died when she was 16 years old. At the time of her death, Lowe's mother had been working on four ball gowns for the First Lady of Alabama, Elizabeth Kirkman O'Neal, wife of Governor Emmet O'Neal. Using the skills she learned from her mother and grandmother, Lowe finished the dresses. Lowe was married twice and had two children. She married Lee Cohen, in 1912. They had a son Arthur Lee who later worked as Lowe's business partner until his death in 1958. Lowe left Cohen because he opposed her having a career.
She married for a second time but that marriage also ended. Lowe later said, "My second husband left me. He said he wanted a real wife, not someone who was forever jumping out of bed to sketch dresses. Lowe later adopted a daughter, Ruth Alexander.
In 1917, Lowe and her son moved to New York City where she enrolled at S.T. Taylor Design School. As the school was segregated, the school’s Headmaster, who was White, didn’t want to admit her based on the color of her skin and White classmates shunned her. Although she was required to attend classes in a room alone, she graduated ahead of time in 1919, and with her son she moved to Tampa, Florida. The following year, she opened her first dress salon, "Annie Cohen". The salon catered to members of White high society and quickly became a success.
Lowe returned to New York City in 1928. For a time, she worked on commission for stores such as Henri Bendel, Chez Sonia, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. During the 1930s, Lowe lived in an apartment on Manhattan Avenue in Harlem. Her older sister Sallie later lived with her. In 1946, Ann designed the dress that Actress Olivia de Havilland wore to accept the Academy Award for Best Actress for To Each His Own, although the name on the dress was Sonia Rosenberg.
As she was not getting credit for her work, Lowe and her son opened a second salon, Ann Lowe's Gowns, in New York City on Lexington Avenue in 1950. Her one of a kind designs made from the finest fabrics were an immediate success and attracted many wealthy, White high society clients. The Saturday Evening Post later called Lowe "Society's best kept secret."
Throughout her career, Lowe was known for being highly selective in choosing her clientele. Over the course of her career, Lowe created designs for several generations of the Auchinclosses, the Rockefellers, the Lodges, the Du Ponts, the Posts and the Biddles.
When word of Lowe’s prodigious talent began to spread, many were shocked to find a Black woman behind the work. After working for a series of fashion houses, some of Lowe’s high society clients and friends pushed her to open her own shop on New York’s famed Madison Avenue in 1950.
In 1953, she was hired to design a wedding dress for future First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier and the dresses for her bridal attendants for her September wedding to then Senator John F. Kennedy. Lowe was chosen by Janet Auchincloss, the mother of Jacqueline Bouvier, who had previously commissioned Lowe to design the wedding dress she wore when she married Hugh D. Auchincloss in 1942.
Lowe's dress for Jacqueline Bouvier consisted of fifty yards of ivory silk taffeta with interwoven bands of tucking forming the bodice and similar tucking in large circular designs swept around the full skirt. The dress, which cost $500 (approximately $4,000 today), was described in detail in The New York Times's coverage of the wedding. While the Bouvier-Kennedy wedding was a highly publicized event, Lowe did not receive public credit for her work.
Tragedy struck Lowe after she was commissioned to designed Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding dress. Her shop’s basement flooded just days ahead of her delivery date for the dress, prompting Lowe to spend more to make the dress than what she charged. Lowe later admitted that at the height of her career, she was virtually broke. In 1962, she lost her salon in New York City after not be able to pay back taxes.
That same year, her right eye was removed due to glaucoma. While she was recuperating, she discovered that Mrs. Kennedy paid off her IRS bill of $12,800 which enabled her to work again. Soon after, she developed cataract in her left eye which was saved after surgery.
In 1968, she opened a new store, Ann Lowe Originals, on Madison Avenue. She retired in 1972. In the last five years of her life, Lowe lived with her daughter Ruth in Queens. She died at her daughter's home on February 25, 1981 after an extended illness. By then, the fashion world had forgotten her. But Ms. Lowe’s contributions are finally being heralded. While the lavish dress she designed for the Kennedy wedding rests in Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
A collection of five of Ann Lowe's designs are held at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, three are on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Several others were included in an exhibition on black fashion at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan in December 2016.
Black women are legendary, long live Black women.
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