Jackie Kennedy’s Wedding Dress Designer Ann Lowe to Be Focus of New Film
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The largely unheralded fashion designer Ann Lowe is getting the celluloid treatment, with support from Serena Williams and Ruth E. Carter.
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Sony’s Tristar film will release the film, “The Dress,” which will be based on Piper Huguley’s historical fiction book “By Her Own Design.” The biopic will focus on Lowe’s experience creating the wedding dress that Jacqueline Bouvier wore to marry John F. Kennedy in 1953 — years before his presidential run. For a long time, Lowe wasn’t publicly recognized for her elaborate custom design.
Lowe died in 1981 at the age of 82. Despite having had a 50-year career that included designing that historic dress and being a go-to designer for society types like Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts, and the H.F. du Pont family in the 1950s and 1960s, Lowe’s career was largely unsung during her lifetime. Further back, another well-heeled society client of Lowe’s was the future first lady’s mother Janet Lee Bouvier, who wore one of Lowe’s designs to wed Hugh Auchincloss in 1942.
Williams, who launched Nine Two Six Productions last year, and Carter, a two-time Oscar-winning costume designer, will pitch in with producing the feature film. Carter, who will also handle the costume design, said she was thrilled to be part of the development of the film “that shines a much-deserved light on Ann Lowe, the first Black woman couturier on Madison Avenue and the brilliant mind behind Jackie Bouvier’s iconic wedding dress.”
“Ann’s contributions to fashion have long been overlooked, and we are in a moment where stories like hers must be unlocked and celebrated,” Carter said. “As a trailblazer in my own right, I understand firsthand the challenges and triumphs of breaking barriers. Through her story, we hope to inspire future generations to dream, push boundaries, and know that they too can achieve greatness, just as she did.”
Born in Clayton, Ala., Lowe learned to sew at the age of 5 from her mother Janine Cole Lowe and her formerly enslaved grandmother Georgia Thompkins, who were established dressmakers at that time. As a 16-year-old, the designer had to take up the family business after her mother died unexpectedly. After several years, she relocated to Tampa, Fla. A chance department store encounter with the Tampa socialite Josephine Edwards Lee, who complimented Lowe about her outfit, led to a live-in dressmaker job offer.
Despite her first husband’s disapproval, Lowe relocated to the family’s estate with her son. Later, with her employer’s support, Lowe enrolled in the S.T. Taylor Design School in New York City. Lowe took classes alone in a room in the segregated school, but she still outperformed her classmates in half the required time. In the city, Lowe would go on to design for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and for her own namesake business. In 1928, Lowe relocated to New York City and developed a loyal well-heeled clientele at a time when Black-owned businesses were rare.
Lowe’s reputation for intricate designs, lace-lined gowns, and fabricated flowers led to her being selected to design Kennedy’s dress for her wedding to the future president, as well as the bridesmaids’ dresses. After a flood in her shop ruined the wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses 10 days before the wedding, Lowe worked overtime to make new ones, which she did so at additional costs and at her own personal expense. That was no small feat. The wedding gown alone was made with 50 yards of ivory silk taffeta and had the dramatic Christian Dior-inspired “New Look” silhouette. With a fitted bodice and a portrait neckline, the dress was embellished with interwoven bands of tucked fabric and an ample skirt that required the “trapunto” sewing technique for a layered effect through ruffles and concentric circles.
During her career, Lowe periodically faced financial challenges that included sometimes being underpaid by clients, who took advantage of her. Her numerous creations included an ivory dress decorated with swirls of handmade fabric rose vines and a sleeveless black cocktail dress with handmade pink floral details.
Carter noted Wednesday that original Ann Lowe couture designs are on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and that Kennedy’s 1953 wedding dress is part of the permanent collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
Although Carter and Williams will be working together for the first time, Carter said, “There is an intellectual place of familiarity we share in the need to create authentic women’s stories that cultivate and move us forward. Serena cares very much and is very vocal in meetings as we build and develop [the film.] She too has shattered the status quo in her career and can relate to this woman’s journey.”
Carter added, “But, the costume design will be in my hands.”
An executive at Nine Two Six Productions acknowledged a media request, but was not immediately available for an interview Wednesday.
WWD first wrote about Lowe in 1960, describing the designer as “a Neiman Marcus ‘secret’ resource for super-elaborate ballgowns,” who had gotten the OK from Saks Fifth Avenue to design for Neiman’s beforehand. At that time, Lowe was manufacturing her gowns with Miss Madison’s shop, but she planned to strike out on her own in 1961. Four years later, Lowe and Florence Cowell formed A.F. Chantilly Inc., a wholesale and retail operation with the boutique selling only what they produced. At that time, ballgowns, wedding gowns and debutante gowns wholesaled from $200 and up, coats started at $350 and suits were upward of $300. She also opened her own shop Ann Lowe Originals on Madison Avenue in the mid-’60s — a first for a Black business owner at that time.
It was only in the past few years that her career and creations started to come into sharper focus through museum exhibitions. A year ago, “Ann Lowe: American Couturier,” which was the largest show of her work thus far, debuted at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in Wilmington, Del. In December of 2023, a Lowe-designed gown was featured prominently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute “Women Designing Women” exhibition — 60-plus years after the garment was first made.
Attending last year’s media preview at The Met, Lowe’s great granddaughter Linda A. Dixon, who has championed Lowe’s legacy for decades, told WWD, “Finally, finally — she’s getting her due.”
Dixon’s literary agent Sharon Parker-Frazier of Crystal Ship Artists said that she and Dixon are in touch with the production team about potential involvement with the film.
Having created a replica of Kennedy’s wedding dress for the Winterthur exhibition after spending three days at the JFK Library and Museum taking “hundreds” of photographs of the garment, examining it inside and out, and measuring every millimeter of it, Katya Roelse said she has spoken with Carter about the prospect of consulting on the film to ensure the dress is “represented as it truly is to try to help Ann Lowe’s story be told, as it relates to the dress, in an accurate way.”
The JFK archives will no longer display the dress because it is in a “deleterious” state — the waistline has tears in it and it wouldn’t be ethical in a conservator way, or respectful,” said Roelse, a fashion design professor at the University of Delaware.
Lowe’s work was also featured in the Costume Institute’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibition in 2022. Decades before in 1989, Lowe’s designs were displayed at “The Soul of Seventh Avenue,” an event celebrating Black designers, that was held at the New York Hilton.
More recently in an interview with WWD in 2020, the fashion designer B Michael noted that while some namesake labels like Oscar de la Renta and Christian Dior have lived on years after their founders died, Lowe’s name had not. “Ann Lowe should be a brand that is viable right now but she isn’t,” he said at that time.
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