It’s hard to feel glamorous stuck at home during lockdown. Wearing my usual sweatpants, I look longingly at some of the gowns in the TRC’s on-line collection, like the pale blue silk chiffon full-length evening dress (TRC 2021.0134) or the lacey, cream coloured, long sleeved wedding dress (TRC 2020.3882a).
Ann Cole Lowe (1898-1981)I also look at some of the gowns of dress designer Ann Cole Lowe (1898-1981). Lowe made a name for herself by dressing high society debutants and wives. Her clients included some of America’s wealthiest families—the Roosevelts, the duPonts and the Rockefellers. Her perfectionism and attention to detail were legendary. She had begun sewing as a child, using the scraps her seamstress mother gave her. At 16, when her mother died unexpectedly, Ann finished all of her commissions—including a dress for the Alabama governor’s wife.
In 1917 she moved to New York City to take sewing classes. The only African-American in the segregated school, she was forced to work in a room alone. Upon graduation she began designing one-of-a-kind dresses for wealthy women, eventually creating her own label and opening a store on New York’s Fifth Avenue. One famous commission was for Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding to then senator John F. Kennedy, in 1953.
Jacqueline Kennedy in a wedding dress sewn by Ann Cole Lowe, 12 September 1953.The wedding gown was made with fifty yards of ivory silk taffeta, and used a sewing technique called “trapunto” for a bouffant, layered look. It, plus 14 other gowns for the wedding party, had taken Lowe eight weeks to sew. A week before the wedding Lowe’s atelier flooded, destroying 10 of the 15 gowns. She replicated them all, but refused to charge anything extra, which resulted in a loss of USD 2,200. When she went to personally deliver the wedding dresses, she was told she would have to use the back door. She refused—and walked through the front door.
While a brilliant designer, Lowe wasn’t good at business. In 1962 she was forced to declare bankruptcy and was in debt for back taxes. An anonymous client paid her debts so Lowe could go back to work. Many think it was Jackie Kennedy who settled the debts.
Lowe’s creations are now in museums such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, and The Museum at FIT.
By Shelley Anderson, 17 February 2021
