Anybody who is anybody in America (or, whom others think is somebody wealthy) is listed in a little something called "The Blue Book." Interestingly enough, that is not the color of the book - it is actually black with pumpkin lettering - but the "blue" stands for the elite color of the blood that was understood to belong to those registered therein.
Also known as The Social Register, it is a semi-annual publication (present annual subscription rate: $75) in the United States that indexes the members of American high society, mostly elite New Yorkers but also California Forty-Niners (who became rich in the Gold Rush of 1848/9) and Texas Wildcatters (descendants of the people who settled Texas) as well as a White House crony or two.
If you were in The Blue Book, you probably had your own private list of people who could get you things or make you things that were rare or costly or at least supported the allure of status. Wine stewards and other Alcohol products, Art Dealers, Interior Decorators, Hair Designers, Millners, Chefs, Pastry makers, Seamstresses and Fashion Designers all worked primarily for the then tight circle of the Social elite.
And because they were privileged and elite, they kept that list to themselves, so if you were good enough to work for the elite, you were perhaps ... maybe... paid well but relative anonymity in your trade was the trade off. Wasn't it enough simply to work for people who lived at this high level of the social stratosphere?
And so it was with the women of the Lowe Family in Clayton, Alabama who were skilled dressmakers who had sewed for wealthy white families in that state for generations.
Ann Lowe was born in Clayton, Alabama, around 1898 and grew up in Montgomery, the youngest daughter of Jane and Jack Lowe. Her older sister was Sallie. She was the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman and an Alabama plantation owner.
Her mother, Janie Cole Lowe, and her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins, were skilled dressmakers who taught Ms. Ann to sew as early as age five.
By the time Ms. Ann was six, she had developed a fondness for using scraps of fabric to make small decorative flowers patterned after the flowers she saw in the family’s garden. This childhood pastime would later become the signature feature on many of her dresses and gowns. By age 10, she made her own dress patterns. After her mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly when Ms. Ann was 16 or 17, she took over the family business.
That much is known, but the particulars of her life contain conflicting information, including the actual date of her birth, perhaps not unusual for a "Negro" girl born in the Deep South. For example, Ms. Ann indicated that she dropped out of school at 14 to marry; however U. S. Census records indicate that Lowe was “living in Dothan, Alabama, with her first husband, Lee Cone, in 1910.”
Based on the 1898 date of birth, she would have been 12 years old at the time of her marriage. In a 1964 Saturday Evening Post article, the reporter noted that Ms. Ann married a man 10 years her senior shortly after her mother died in 1914, when she would have been 16 or 17 years old. Her son and later business partner, Arthur Lee Cone, was born a year after she married. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident in New York in 1958.
Ann Lowe is probably best known for designing the wedding dress of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy but never given credit for it until years after the wedding. Jackie's mother, Janet Lee Acuhincloss, commissioned Ms. Ann to design the wedding gown as well as all of the gowns of the bridal attendants, having used her to design her daughter's debutante gowns.
Ms Ann was known as "the best kept secret" in fashion design. That status, perhaps repeated as a compliment, was a thin, gauze applique to distract from the racism that kept her from being at least as as well known as The Houses of Dior or or Chanel admitted that her design and the quality of her workmanship often exceeded their own.
Throughout her career, Lowe was a celebrated designer of one-of-a-kind dresses for her powerful and wealthy clients, although some of them did not pay her for the costs of the labor and materials, or they asked her for prices that they knew were substantially below what they would have paid a white designer. Those circumstances left Lowe with a minimum amount of funds after paying her staff.
Some of her clientele remained loyal to her, helping her through difficult times. For example, in 1962, the U.S. Department of Revenue closed Lowe’s New York shop due to $12,800 owed in back taxes. She also owed $10, 000 to suppliers. The debt was later quietly and generously paid by Jacqueline Kennedy.
After the foreclosure of her salon, Lowe began working for Madeleine Couture. The small, custom salon, located on Madison Ave., belonged to Benjamin and Ione Stoddard. The Stoddards were instrumental in helping Ms. Ann obtain the risky operation to remove cataracts in her left eye, even as she was experiencing glaucoma in her right eye.
In addition, they organized a major fashion show, which included runway models who were former clients wearing the designs Lowe created for them. The Stoddards also arranged two television interviews of Lowe on The Mike Douglas Show in 1964.
Ms. Ann continuously invented and reinvented herself, even though she encountered many devastating obstacles—discrimination, financial challenges, loss of close family members, health problems, and people who took advantage of her kindness and lack of business acumen.
Through it all, she maintained her ambitions to manifest her choices—to work for families on America’s Social Registry and to establish salons that bore her name as the creative director of Ann Lowe fashions.
A collection of five of Ann Lowe's designs are held at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Three are on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
A personal note about prestigious Blue Books
Also known as The Social Register, it is a semi-annual publication (present annual subscription rate: $75) in the United States that indexes the members of American high society, mostly elite New Yorkers but also California Forty-Niners (who became rich in the Gold Rush of 1848/9) and Texas Wildcatters (descendants of the people who settled Texas) as well as a White House crony or two.
If you were in The Blue Book, you probably had your own private list of people who could get you things or make you things that were rare or costly or at least supported the allure of status. Wine stewards and other Alcohol products, Art Dealers, Interior Decorators, Hair Designers, Millners, Chefs, Pastry makers, Seamstresses and Fashion Designers all worked primarily for the then tight circle of the Social elite.
And because they were privileged and elite, they kept that list to themselves, so if you were good enough to work for the elite, you were perhaps ... maybe... paid well but relative anonymity in your trade was the trade off. Wasn't it enough simply to work for people who lived at this high level of the social stratosphere?
And so it was with the women of the Lowe Family in Clayton, Alabama who were skilled dressmakers who had sewed for wealthy white families in that state for generations.
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| Ms. Ann Lowe in Manhattan |
Her mother, Janie Cole Lowe, and her grandmother, Georgia Thompkins, were skilled dressmakers who taught Ms. Ann to sew as early as age five.
By the time Ms. Ann was six, she had developed a fondness for using scraps of fabric to make small decorative flowers patterned after the flowers she saw in the family’s garden. This childhood pastime would later become the signature feature on many of her dresses and gowns. By age 10, she made her own dress patterns. After her mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly when Ms. Ann was 16 or 17, she took over the family business.
That much is known, but the particulars of her life contain conflicting information, including the actual date of her birth, perhaps not unusual for a "Negro" girl born in the Deep South. For example, Ms. Ann indicated that she dropped out of school at 14 to marry; however U. S. Census records indicate that Lowe was “living in Dothan, Alabama, with her first husband, Lee Cone, in 1910.”
Based on the 1898 date of birth, she would have been 12 years old at the time of her marriage. In a 1964 Saturday Evening Post article, the reporter noted that Ms. Ann married a man 10 years her senior shortly after her mother died in 1914, when she would have been 16 or 17 years old. Her son and later business partner, Arthur Lee Cone, was born a year after she married. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident in New York in 1958.
Ann Lowe is probably best known for designing the wedding dress of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy but never given credit for it until years after the wedding. Jackie's mother, Janet Lee Acuhincloss, commissioned Ms. Ann to design the wedding gown as well as all of the gowns of the bridal attendants, having used her to design her daughter's debutante gowns.
 |
| Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress |
Throughout her career, Lowe was a celebrated designer of one-of-a-kind dresses for her powerful and wealthy clients, although some of them did not pay her for the costs of the labor and materials, or they asked her for prices that they knew were substantially below what they would have paid a white designer. Those circumstances left Lowe with a minimum amount of funds after paying her staff.
Some of her clientele remained loyal to her, helping her through difficult times. For example, in 1962, the U.S. Department of Revenue closed Lowe’s New York shop due to $12,800 owed in back taxes. She also owed $10, 000 to suppliers. The debt was later quietly and generously paid by Jacqueline Kennedy.
After the foreclosure of her salon, Lowe began working for Madeleine Couture. The small, custom salon, located on Madison Ave., belonged to Benjamin and Ione Stoddard. The Stoddards were instrumental in helping Ms. Ann obtain the risky operation to remove cataracts in her left eye, even as she was experiencing glaucoma in her right eye.
In addition, they organized a major fashion show, which included runway models who were former clients wearing the designs Lowe created for them. The Stoddards also arranged two television interviews of Lowe on The Mike Douglas Show in 1964.
Ms. Ann continuously invented and reinvented herself, even though she encountered many devastating obstacles—discrimination, financial challenges, loss of close family members, health problems, and people who took advantage of her kindness and lack of business acumen.
Through it all, she maintained her ambitions to manifest her choices—to work for families on America’s Social Registry and to establish salons that bore her name as the creative director of Ann Lowe fashions.
A collection of five of Ann Lowe's designs are held at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Three are on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
A personal note about prestigious Blue Books
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| General Convention "Blue Books" |
One year, when it was announced that the color of the book would change - perhaps (Gasp!) to salmon or crimson - it became front page news on all of The Episcopal Publications at the time. Bloggers (who were all the rage at the time and a real threat to 'legacy media' like ENS) blogged about it and wrung their hands in distress. People were outraged - OUTRAGED, I tell you - as it was seen as a harbinger of the final decline of The Episcopal Church.
The similarly printed, bound book which contained all the names of The Episcopal Clergy was known as "The Red Book." It was also known as "The Stud Book," even a decade after the ordination of women.
To my knowledge, the color controversy died a quiet, dignified death with the coming of the Age of Technology and is now available online. It was buried alongside the very large three-ring binders which deputies used to lug around from hearing to hearing to legislative session. Deputies of a certain age will remember reams of paper being distributed with the latest updated version of changes to resolutions and the loud "click, click, click" of deputies adding pages to their three-ring binders.
It will also be remembered that Pam Chinnis, the first woman to be President of the House of Deputies and a force with which to be reckoned, would occasionally raise her voice from the podium, rap her gavel, and scold, "Silence. Stop. That. Clicking."
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia.
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