ANNE LOWE: the exquisite legacy of the first African-American couturier
Sarah Abraham
The art and artisanship of Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American
from an exhibition at Winterthur Museum, DE, 2023-2024
Ann Lowe was the first African-American couturier.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, she made the dresses which she designed for the American elite and sold from coast to coast.
She was at the height of her renown when she was invited to make the 1953 wedding dress of Jacqueline Kennedy, along with 14 other dresses for the wedding.
Evening dress for Sarah Lykes Keller, 1924, silk faille, glass beads.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned by Henry B. Plant Museum, Inc. to Winterthur Museum in 2023
This evening shift, circa 1924, is the earliest confirmed example of Lowe’s couture. Every bead was attached individually.
Ann Lowe’s maternal grandmother was Georgia Tompkins (Thompkins).
She and her mother were slave seamstresses on the Alabaman plantation which was owned by Georgia’s father.
On the left
This image by Benjamin Chambers/Delaware News Journal
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned by the Henry B. Plant Museum Society, Inc., Tampa Florida to Winterthur Museum in 2023
On the right
TBD
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Exhibited at Winterthur in 2023
In the center
This image by Benjamin Chambers/Delaware News Journal
1961 Gown made for The Adam Room, Saks FifthAvenue (department store), and worn by Ann Lallman Jessop; silk, tulle, synthetic fabric, synthetic horsehair braid, elastic, lace trim, sequins, beads, metal zipper, hooks and eyes, and snaps; and various bonings, potentially wood on the hoop skirt.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned by The Durham Museum to Winterthur Museum, DE in 2023
Ann Lowe’s mother, Jane, was born during the Civil War. In due course, Jane and her mother, Georgia, had become society dressmakers in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama state.
Ann Lowe was born in Clayton, Alabama, in 1898 (date given by her; possibly earlier). In due course, she was apprenticed to her maternal family business which she took over when her mother died in 1914.
Ann Lowe was called right away to Montgomery to finish four ball gowns for the wife of Alabama’s governor.
It was her making in every sense.
1934 Bodice of Afternoon Dress with belt; silk.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned in 2023 to Winterthur Museum by Cincinnati Museum of Art
A serendipitous meeting in 1916 with the wife of a wealthy Florida citrus grower with daughters to clothe resulted in a role for Ann Lowe as a seamstress in a private household in Tampa, Florida.
She abandoned her husband and took her son.
1941 Wedding Dress made for Jane Trimingham; synthetic.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY loan in 2023 to Winterthur Museum
Silk was difficult to get in wartime and was rationed after 1942. The Bermuda lilies evoke the relationship of the bride’s family to the island.
In 1917, her private employer sponsored her enrollment in a dressmaking school in Manhattan, the mecca of the clothing industry.
She quit that school after only a few months when its French director admitted that he had nothing more to teach her.
1951 Wedding Dress worn by Florance Trevor; silk satin, lace, gauze, buckram, tulle, and metal fastners.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Smithsonian American African Museum of History and Culture loan to Winterthur Museum in 2023
Ann Low said that Tampa bore the happiest memories for her. Leaving New York she returned to Tampa for a decade. She married again: a marriage which also failed.
By 1928, she had returned to New York with a few assistants to make her way in a place she believed equal to her skills and ambition.
By the early 1950’s, Ann Lowe already had as a client Janet Auchincloss, the mother of Jackie (Bouvier) Kennedy. Her dress and that of her sister for their debuts in Newport, RI had been made by Ann Lowe.
Janet Auchincloss commissioned Ann Lowe to make Jackie’s wedding dress, the dresses for the bridesmaids also. A total of 15 dresses.
This was the style approved by John F. Kennedy’s father: ivory silk taffeta with a portrait neckline, a modestly tucked bodice, and a vast umbrella skirt appliquéd with huge rosettes.
He did not want a svelte-slinky ‘foreign-looking’ number.
The dresses were destroyed by a plumbing flood in the couturier’s studio just before the wedding; and were all remade at Ann Lowe’s expense.
When directed to the back door of the Auchincloss farm for delivery, Lowe threatened to take them back if the front door was not opened for her.
A copy of the wedding dress of Jacqueline Kennedy created at the request of Winterthur Museum by Katya Roelse assisted by Kayla Brown and Alex Culley, Newark, DE of an original by Anne Lowe of 1953
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned to Winterthur Museum by Chicago History Museum in 2023
This image by Benjamin Chambers/Delaware News Journal
1961 Gown for Lynne Neville Robertson; silk, tulle, synthetic fabric, synthetic horsehair braid; elastic; lace trim; sequins, beads, boning, metal zipper, hooks and eyes, and snaps.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned by The Durham Museum to Winterthur Museum in 2023
Between 1928 and the late 1960s, Ann Lowe made her spectacular way,
client by client, dress by dress; hand-sewn bead by hand-sewn bead and hand-rolled silk flowers one after another.
In 1950, she opened a salon in New York where she created singular pieces for high society women; or as Ann Lowe called them: “the social register”.
Ann Lowe’s business affairs were kept by her son until his untimely death. No-one replaced him.
An inept business woman, unable to deal effectively with the money-mean-spiritedness of her wealthy clients, Ann Lowe was not successful in a business sense. Often she lost money on her creations.
Her business was shut down by the IRS in the early 1960s for non-payment of taxes. Ann Lowe believed that the anonymous donor who paid off this debt was Jackie Kennedy who had not acknowledged her prior to this or helped her in any other way.
In 1964, Ann Lowe was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Her eyesight failing, she continued to work until 1972.
Finally, she retired to the home of a friend, a former protege who had followed her to New York from Tampa.
There in 1981 she died.
this image from the net
1966-67, Debutante Gown worn by Barbara Baldwin Dowd; ivory silk, tulle, linen, metal and elastic.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loan to Winterthur Museum, DE by the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in 2023
The variety of rose is called the American Beauty. This gave its name to the dress.
Throughout her life, Ann Lowe had to deal with the gross racism of the age.
Just two examples.
She was segregated in a classroom of her own when she registered for fashion design school in New York because nobody else wanted to be with or near her.
Described as a ‘coloured woman designer’ in an important woman’s magazine article about Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress, Ann Lowe complained, to no avail, to the White House.
For her part, she said, on nationwide TV in 1964 that she wanted “to prove that a Negro can become a major dress designer.”
Her style was luxuriously, fantasy feminine. She worked for wealthy people, both white and black. Her imaginative designs and their translation were widely admired and nobody would have gainsaid her own view of her achievement.
1964 Evening Dress for Madeleine Couture; silk, ostrich feathers.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Private collection loan to Winterthur Museum in 2023
TBD
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Exhibited at Winterthur Museum in 2023
Ann Lowe’s name and work was forgotten for decades except by some of the families who have safeguarded her clothing.
That she is now again in the limelight is the result of work by Black fashion professionals.
Particularly by Margaret Powell, a textile historian from Pittsburgh whose master thesis was published in 2012 by the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. Ms. Powell died of illness at 43 two years before this exhibition.
This image by Benjamin Chambers/Delaware News Journal
Wedding dress worn by Elizabeth Monce, Washington, DC, 1968; synthetic fabric, cotton, lace, tulle , synthetic horsehair, elastic, metal zipper and closures.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned by a private party to Winterthur Museum in 2023
TBD
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Exhibited at Winterthur Museum in 2023
1966-67 Evening dress made for A.E. Chantilly, Inc.; brocaded silk, chiffon, synthetic fiber, buckram, elastic and metal fibers.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Loaned to Winterthur Museum in 2023 by the Smithsonian American Museum of African-American History and Culture
Indian silk became the rage after a Jackie Kennedy visit to India.
Dress made for the concert pianist, Elizabeth Mance; c. 1966/67; silk, synthetic fabric, bobbinet, lace, beads, synthetic horsehair, metal zipper, hook and eye.
Ann Lowe, 1898-1981, American. Private collection loan to Winterthur Museum in 2023
