Forgotten African American fashion designer steps into the spotlight

Quick, rattle off the names of some of the most famous dress designers. Go: Vera Wang, Coco Chanel, Stella McCartney, Versace.

Ann Lowe probably did not flow trippingly on the tongue.

Yet, Lowe, who died in 1981 when she was 82, made the dresses of some of high society’s best-known names in the ‘40s and ‘50s, including Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding dress in 1953. Bouvier later became better known as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

The overlooked Lowe is given plenty of overdue recognition — just in time for Women's History Month — in Tallahassee author Julie Faye Smith’s recent biography “Something to Prove.” The book sells for $9.99 at www.amazon.com.

“I didn’t know anything about her, so that’s why I wrote the book,” Smith said. “Most people have never heard of her.”

Smith, who usually writes historical and romantic fiction, initially thought she would use Lowe’s life story as grist for a novel. Then she changed her mind once she started the research.

“It became clear to me that her story, her true, unvarnished story had to be told,” Smith wrote in a blog. “I began my research to clarify things for myself and found myself getting to know a strong woman from a family of strong women.”

Lowe was born in rural Clayton, Ala., near Eufaula, at the end of the 19th century. Her family later moved to Montgomery, where her mother and she designed clothing for the governor of Alabama’s family. Lowe soon headed south in 1916 to Tampa, where she opened a dress shop and designed original ball gowns for debutantes and Gasparilla socialites. In the fall of 1927, she moved to Harlem in Manhattan shortly before the Stock Market crash.

After surviving the Great Depression, Lowe’s career picked up steam when she designed a wedding dress for A.F. Chantilly in 1941. The gown is now part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. In 1947, movie star Olivia de Havilland wore a pale blue, Lowe-designed creation when she picked up the Oscar for Best Actress in “To Each His Own” (1946).

During the post-World War II era, Lowe became known as high society’s “best-kept secret,” as The Saturday Evening Post called her, while making stylish dresses for women with last names such as DuPont, Roosevelt, Whitney and Rothschild.

“Many in upper northeastern circles during that time, that meant a dress by Ann Lowe,” Smith writes in the biography. “Ann’s layers of flouncy materials or expertly fitting elegant fabrics were just the thing to make young girls feel confident. One debutante explained the wearing an Ann Lowe gown made her feel beautiful even though she did not see herself as a beauty.”

In 1952, Lowe met with Jacqueline Bouvier, when the young socialite was engaged to a Wall Street stock broker, to design a wedding gown. The engagement was later broken off, but Bouvier did not forget about Lowe when she later accepted an offer of marriage from then-Sen. John F. Kennedy.

“The dress was described by many society editors, but the designer’s name, with one exception, was never mentioned,” Smith writes in the book.

By the dawn of the ‘70s, Lowe’s eyesight was failing and she retired from the fashion world. Her finances were in shambles and she died as a mostly forgotten footnote in designer history.

Her legacy is changing a lot in the 21st century.

Three of Lowe’s gowns are included in the Smithsonian Institution’s newly opened National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. In December 2016, Lowe’s works were put on display at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The best-kept secret is not so secret any longer.

Contact Mark Hinson at mhinson@tallahassee.com