Ann Lowe, a designer of opulent gowns for elite American society, was born in Clayton, Alabama, into a family of dressmakers. Her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins, and mother, Janie Cole, had been enslaved until 1860, when Lowe’s maternal grandfather purchased their freedom. The women developed a thriving dressmaking business in Montgomery catered to white clients, including the wife of Alabama’s governor in the 1910s. They trained Lowe from a young age in sewing, patternmaking, and design. She developed her signature floral embellishments early on, recreating flowers from the garden using scraps of fabric.
Lowe married very young, had a son, and gave up dressmaking at the insistence of her husband. When her mother died unexpectedly in 1914, however, Lowe stepped in to finish an important order of New Year’s gowns for a group of wealthy women. This accomplishment reignited her passion for design; soon after, she was hired by Josephine Lee, the affluent wife of a Florida citrus grower. Lee admired a stylish ensemble in an Alabama department store and, upon learning that Lowe herself had designed it, invited her to become the Lee family’s live-in dressmaker. In 1916, Lowe left her husband and moved with her son to Lake Thonotosassa outside Tampa. Lowe’s refined sense of design and advanced dressmaking skills created an opportunity for mobility that was rare for a Black woman in the early twentieth-century Jim Crow South.
Lowe designed fashionable garments for Lee and her four daughters, including tailored suits, afternoon dresses, and, as the girls married, wedding gowns. In 1917, she made a brief sojourn to New York City to attend fashion school. Although she was segregated from her classmates due to her race, she was awarded a degree early thanks to her expertise. Lowe then returned to Florida to resume her business. She remarried around 1920, forming a workshop attached to her new family home in Tampa. By this time, Lowe’s clientele had grown far beyond the Lee family, and she was regarded as one of the city’s top designers, especially for wedding gowns.
Few seamstresses in Tampa could meet Lowe’s technical standards, so she trained assistants in her workshop, creating a space where other Black women were able to find safe employment and learn new job skills. Between 1924 and 1929, Lowe was commissioned by the organizers of Tampa’s annual Gasparilla festival to design fantastical evening wear for the Gasparilla Court, a mock royal court of men and women selected from the local elite, which carried a different theme every year. She became known for creating ornate costumes featuring lamé and spangles for the young socialites of the Gasparilla Court, as well as the more typically fashionable beaded and embellished 1920s evening gowns for the event’s many attendees.
New York Society Designer
Like many other Black Americans who participated in the Great Migration, Lowe aimed to expand her opportunities and prestige by making a permanent move to New York City. She relocated in 1928 with the hope of establishing a custom design salon, but the Great Depression soon hampered her plans. She survived by working for larger manufacturers such as Hattie Carnegie and Sonia Gowns, selling her work on commission, and maintaining a small circle of private clients, including some in Tampa.
Lowe’s work from the early 1940s reflects her exquisite craftsmanship, the relationships she had developed with her clients, and the restrictions on American fashion imposed during World War II. Her wedding dress for Jane Tanner Trimingham (1975.349a, b) is a beautifully crafted example of the increasingly structured shoulders and gentle A-line skirt silhouettes of the early 1940s. It is personalized with fabric Bermuda lilies, a reference to the bride’s family connections to the island, and is crafted from acetate instead of the traditional silk satin, as silk imports from East Asia dramatically decreased after Japan’s invasion of China in 1931.
Lowe kept abreast of broader trends in Eurocentric fashion, which she expertly adapted to fit the needs and desires of her clients. A 1947 gown designed under Sonia Gowns for actress Olivia de Havilland’s appearance at the Academy Awards is a sweetly feminine design featuring a ruffled strapless neckline, an accentuated waist, and a full skirt adorned with hand-painted flowers, reflecting the New Look style that was taking over women’s fashion. Lowe excelled at the historically inspired, abundantly embellished, and highly structured silhouette of the period. Her works from this era (1994.562a, b, 1979.151.2, 1979.144) are built of multiple layers from the inside out with inset bustiers, padding, and waist stays, illustrating a custom-made quality on par with haute couture.
The 1950s were the height of Lowe’s career. She headed a series of salons on Madison and Lexington Avenues that were operated in partnership with white financial backers. Without white support, it would have been nearly impossible for a Black woman to rent space on the elite Upper East Side. This location was crucial to attracting the caliber of clients who wore her designs. Among them were such prominent American women as Marjorie Merriweather Post and Janet Auchincloss (mother of Jacqueline Bouvier), as well as many others listed in the Social Register. Her partnerships were also important for Lowe as she had no interest in and paid little attention to financial matters; she was often coaxed by her clients into undercharging for her work. Despite this, Lowe experienced a stable period in her career, selling hundreds of custom dresses each year and creating wholesale designs that sold nationally at high-end department stores. Lowe’s son, Arthur Cone, contributed to her stability by helping to manage her finances.
Lowe’s most famous gown is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s 1953 wedding dress. Janet Auchincloss brought all of her daughters to Lowe for their debutante gowns and returned for her eldest’s bridal party dresses. While this commission for a highly anticipated social event was meant to dramatically boost Lowe’s national profile, it was plagued by disaster. A water pipe burst in her workroom ten days before the wedding, and Lowe took a loss remaking ten of the gowns, including the bride’s. Further, she was not publicly credited in the press as the dress designer at the time.
Lowe’s life and career suffered a major blow when Arthur Cone was killed in a car accident in 1958. She also developed glaucoma in her right eye, causing pain and disrupting her work. Her tax payments fell into arrears, and in 1960 she closed her atelier due to debt. She took a position heading Saks Fifth Avenue’s custom salon, the Adam Room. Although her name did not appear on the labels of the gowns she created there, Lowe’s distinctive design and construction style makes them easy to identify (1979.260.2).
Finding the financial terms of her contract with Saks unfavorable, Lowe left in 1962 and filed for bankruptcy in 1963. She also underwent eye surgery to remove her glaucoma-damaged right eye. Lowe found work in the fall of 1962 with Madeleine Couture, a custom house run by Benjamin and Ione Stoddard. They were well aware of Lowe’s reputation and embarked on a press campaign to promote her work. In publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and television programs like The Mike Douglas Show, she was finally able to claim credit for the influential designs she had contributed to American fashion for decades. Even though her eyesight was poor—Lowe underwent cataract surgery on her left eye in 1964—her gowns from this period (1979.151.1) illustrate the high level of design and craftsmanship she was still able to achieve. And in an American fashion scene dominated by ready-to-wear clothing, customers prized the experience of having Lowe make custom dresses for them. Her young debutante clients often remarked on Lowe’s kind demeanor and the confidence that her one-of-a-kind gowns gave them at high-profile social events.
Later Career
Lowe ran her own dress shop with her partner Ida Mitchel and continued at Madeleine Couture until 1965. She then formed A. F. Chantilly with designer Florence Cowell, focusing on debutante gowns and continuing to take commissions for wedding dresses. Lowe appeared in a feature story for Ebony magazine in 1966, sitting for a portrait that communicated her status as an esteemed designer. In it, she conveys the minimalist chic of the fashion creator in a black sheath and hat and poses with a model who wears her satin-and-lace evening set (1980.433.2a, b). While fashion became less formal during the 1960s, Lowe’s work remained in demand. She outfitted eighty-five debutantes in 1967 alone. By this time, however, Lowe’s sight was almost completely gone, forcing her retirement in 1972.
Although Lowe was underpublicized and underappreciated as an important American fashion designer during her lifetime, the fine quality of her work, created for the special occasions of the social elite, meant that her gowns naturally made their way into museum collections, while the impact of her work has been increasingly recognized by scholars of fashion. The Black Fashion Museum in Harlem presented a monographic exhibition of Lowe’s work in 1986, and in 2023 the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, presented Ann Lowe: American Couturier, which was accompanied by a scholarly book on Lowe’s life, career, and impact on American fashion. Lowe’s work is archived at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and The Museum at FIT, among other institutions.