DID YOU KNOW? for July 5 - 18, 2022:  

Did You Know…Ann Cole Lowe was the first African American to become a well-known fashion designer. Her designs were favored by high-society women, including members of the DuPont, Post, and Rockefeller families, well-known department stores like Henri Bendel, Nieman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue, and ‘fashionistas’ of the time from debutants to Oscar winners.

Ann was born in Alabama in 1898 and grew up sewing like her grandmother and mother who were dressmakers. Ann’s fashion designs became recognized nationally in the 1920’s and stayed popular for over 4 decades.  Some of her most famous work was for the bride and bridesmaids in the 1953 wedding of Jacqueline Bouvier to then Senator John F. Kennedy. In 1968 Ann opened her Ann Lowe Originals boutique on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, becoming the first African American owned business in the center of American fashion.

Ann earned many prestigious design commissions and international fashion honors in her lifetime, and told a 1966 interviewer, “All the pleasure I have had, I owe to my sewing.”

Learn more…..

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/lowe-ann-cole-1898-1981/