When, in 1953, a newlywed Jacqueline Kennedy was asked for the name of the designer of her bridal gown -- at the time, one of the most photographed gowns -- she reportedly responded, "a colored woman dressmaker."
Now, 70 years later, the work of Ann Lowe, an African-American couturier who indeed had designed and made the first lady's wedding dress, as well as the dresses for her bridal party, is being celebrated at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Delaware. "Ann Lowe: American Couturier" will open Saturday. The largest exhibition to date of her work, featuring 40 of her one-of-a-kind fairytale gowns, many that have never been on public display, is set to run through January 2024.
In addition, CBS will air a short retrospective about the influential Black designer on Saturday during its news show "CBS Saturday Morning," hosted by Michelle Miller.
What does any of this have to do with the East End? A lot.
In the early 1960s, Ann Lowe had been employed at Madeline Couture, a small custom dress shop on Madison Avenue in New York City, owned by Benjamin and Ione Stoddard, who lived on Egypt Lane and in various other historical homes around East Hampton.
"In 1962, Miss Lowe called the shop and told my parents that 30 years earlier she had called my grandparents, who had started Madeline Couture, because she was looking for a job," said Sharman Peddy, the Stoddards' daughter, a longtime East Hampton resident and real estate broker. "She arrived for the interview with her photos of the Jackie wedding dress and my parents hired her. She stayed for five years" as lead designer.
Ms. Peddy remembers her well, having spent her childhood going back and forth to New York City. "I practically grew up in the workroom of that little shop on the second floor at 510 Madison Avenue. I also have vivid memories of walking with my mother and Miss Lowe to M&J Trimmings [in the garment district], where they bought all the trimmings needed for her gowns," recalled Ms. Peddy. In 1963, Lowe custom made Ms. Peddy's dress for her confirmation ceremony at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Hampton.
Much of Lowe's history is a jumble of misinformation and inaccurately recorded facts. According to interviews given by Lowe in fashion magazines, she was born around 1898 and raised in Montgomery, Ala., the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman. Her mother and grandmother were seamstresses to wealthy white Alabama elites, which is how she learned her craft.
By the late 1920s, she had created her own label and her clientele grew, albeit still within a particular group of elite American society women: debutantes, Southern belles, politicians' wives, and the wealthy and powerful patricians of the Northeast, such as Janet Auchincloss, Jacqueline Bouvier's mother.
By the early 1960s, British designers like Mary Quant were busy hiking up the hemlines and introducing the trendy young to the "mod" era of fashion. Jane Birkin, Twiggy, and Brigitte Bardot were the "it girls," but America's upper class young women were still intoxicated by the rituals of the debutante balls. These were the ultimate celebration of wealth, a familial rite of passage, and the affirmation of social identity.
And Lowe's ethereal confections were the stuff of debutantes' dreams: yards and yards of taffeta, satin, organdy, and tulle that went into creating her dreamy princess silhouettes. But she was also known for her handiwork -- elaborate hand beading, intricate pintucks, as well as shaping delicate cloth flowers out of the scraps of leftover satin, which would be used as appliques on her gowns.
By all accounts, Lowe was as much of a snob as her high society clients; she was notoriously picky when it came to whom she would dress. Olivia de Havilland, the Hollywood starlet at the time, was seemingly deserving of her efforts. So, too, was Marjorie Merriweather Post and those bastions of gentility -- the Rockefeller, Roosevelt, and du Pont families.
"I do not cater to Mary and Sue. I sew for the families of the Social Register," Ms. Lowe said in a 1966 Ebony magazine interview.
Lowe had arrived in New York in 1928 and over three decades rented various shops in and around midtown Manhattan. From the outside, it would seem she had built a thriving business. Yet, many of those wealthy and powerful families who would commission her would often haggle over her prices, offering to pay far less than they would a white couturier and a mere fraction of what they would pay for haute couture from France. As a result, Lowe often took a financial hit when making a commissioned gown. Even the Kennedy wedding dress, for which she ultimately became famous, was a financially disastrous job. A plumbing leak in her studio destroyed the wedding gown and all the bridal party dresses 10 days before the event. Lowe tirelessly worked to recreate all the gowns in time for the wedding -- at her own expense. The debacle cost her over $2,000 but she never reported the loss to the Auchincloss family.
In 1962, the United States Department of Revenue closed Lowe's New York shop due to unpaid back taxes. She was forced to declare bankruptcy and find other employment. That's when she called the Stoddards at Madeline Couture.
"My father was responsible for getting her a lot of publicity," said Ms. Peddy on a recent phone call. "He hired a P.R. gal in Montauk, who helped get Miss Lowe an appearance on 'The Mike Douglas Show,' which was recorded in Cleveland," said Ms. Peddy, sharing with The Star a photograph of her elegantly-dressed mother and the strikingly fashionable figure of Lowe, sharply dressed in all black, and wearing dark glasses and her signature top hat-styled chapeau. The women posed for the photograph in front of a United Airlines plane bound for Cleveland.
That same year, the Stoddards also organized a major fashion show at the Berkshire Hotel in Manhattan, with a champagne reception, that was listed in The Star. Mia Farrow was one of the runway models enlisted to showcase Lowe's designs.
By 1966, the designer was suffering terribly with cataracts and the Stoddards helped get her what was then a risky operation, including the removal of her right eye. But, shortly thereafter, the East Hampton couple shuttered their Madison Avenue shop and Ms. Stoddard, who subsequently divorced her husband, moved the business to West Palm Beach, Fla. By the time Lowe retired in 1972, her name was largely forgotten. She died in Queens in 1981, almost penniless, immortalized as "society's best kept secret."
In 2017, Ms. Peddy's mother died, leaving her daughter a "treasure chest" of Lowe's artifacts: sketches, dress orders, business receipts, photographs, her signature silk flowers, and even a few dresses, as well as a long, velvet coat, trimmed with hand-embroidered beading, which Ms. Peddy donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
Around this time, Ms. Peddy had been introduced to Elizabeth Way, the associate curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, who had done extensive research on the work of Lowe and several other Black fashion designers. Ms. Way introduced Ms. Peddy to Margaret Powell, a fashion historian who had studied Lowe for 10 years.
"Margaret came out to East Hampton in the dead of winter in 2018, when we had two feet of snow," said Ms. Peddy. "She stayed at the 1770 House while she authenticated everything my mother had left. And, it was she who suggested I donate the long velvet coat to the Smithsonian."
Ms. Powell, who died in 2019, was also instrumental in setting into motion the upcoming exhibition at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. Ms. Way of F.I.T. got involved with the project in 2020, serving as a guest curator of the exhibition.
Describing the landscape of society fashion in the 1960s, Ms. Way said over Zoom, "There was a cachet to having French couture at the time. If you had an American designer, you'd lose some cachet. If it were a female designer, there would be even less cachet, and a Black female American designer was definitely even less than that."
Ms. Peddy donated the entire contents of her mother's treasure trove to the Winterthur Museum and many of the artifacts will be on display. "It's been six years that I've been working with the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where Margaret Powell worked. After she died, Winterthur decided to do the show in Margaret's memory," said Ms. Peddy, who will be in Delaware for the opening reception on Saturday.
"I will forever be so proud that my parents helped Miss Lowe at a time when Black fashion designers were not publicized. My mother was even influential in having Ann Lowe's name printed in the 'Who's Who of America,' " said Ms. Peddy.
