Who Was Fashions High Society Power-House Anne Lown, Elizabeth Keckley , and Zelda Wynn Valdes?

Anne Lowe, Elizabeth Keckley, and Zelda Wynn Valdes were three of many black designers who gain an reputation in the Fashion Industry, in the 19th and beginning 20th century .

During the 19th century,enslaved Black women picked the cotton and other raw materials for clothes . As well as, sewing for plantation owners and their household, or worked as a seamstress and dressmaker for years.

Although, racial discrimination prevented Black designers from the Fashion Industry , for these three women "No", wasn't a option.

Anne Cole Lowe

Lowe was an American Fashion Designer and the first African American to become a noted fashion designer. She was born December 14, 1898 in rural Clayton, Alabama by her mother a slave women Jane Lowe, and an Alabama plantation owner. Lowe's and her older sister, Sallie Interest in fashion, sewing, and designing came from her mother and grandmother Georgia. They both worked as Seamstresses for high society.

In 1912, Lowe had a son named Arthur Lee, and married then divorced Lee Cohen.Further, In 1917, she and her son moved to New York City, where she enrolled at S.T. Taylor Design School, which was segregated, and required Lowe to attend all of her classes alone in a room. After graduating in 1919, Lowe opened up two different salons. "Ann Lowe's Gowns", which catered to members of high society. As a result, she was not getting credit for her work, after designing Olivia de Havilland dress, for the "Academy For Best Actress", that moment of being discredited, made Lowe even more ambitious.

In the 1950's, she was hired to design a wedding dress for Jacqueline Kennedy and her bridal attendants. The dress consisted of fifty yards of Ivory silk taffeta with interwoven bands of tucking forming the bodice and similar tucking in large circular designs which swept around the full skirt. Still , Lowe did not receive public credit for her work. In 1961, she received " The Couturier Of The Year Award", but in 1962 she lost her salon in New York City after failing to pay taxes.

Later, Lowe remarried then divorced her second husband and adopted a daughter named Ruth Alexander. Soon after that her right eye was removed due to Glaucoma , and soon after that, she developed Cataract in her left eye. Still with the help of a disclosed friend who helped paid off Lowe's debts, In 1968 she opened a new store, called "Ann Lowe Originals", on Madison Avenue.

Eventually, After an extended illness fashion designer Anne Lowe passed away February 25, 1981 in Queens, NY.

Elizabeth Keckley

" None of us are perfect,for which reason we should heed the voice of charity when it whispers in our ears , do not magnify the imperfections of others". -Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley a successful Seamstress,Civil Activist, and Author, was born into slavery in February 1818, in Dinwiddie County Court House, Dinwiddie, Virginia. An only child, her mother Agnes, nicknamed "Aggy", was a light -skinned house slave, whose white Ancestors were Aristocrats. Secondly, Keckley learned that her father was Armistead Burwell,from her mother just before she died. She became a nursemaid to an infant when she was four years old, as well as receiving brutal treatment if she failed to care properly for the baby.

By the time Keckley became a Teenager (14) , in 1832 she was sent "on a generous loan", to live with and serve the eldest Burwell son Robert and his wife Margaret Anna Robertson in Chesterfield County,Virginia. While living with Robert, she received brutal treatment including being raped and whipped by many of the Burwell's family members including family friend William J. Bingham . Though Margaret who enlisted neighbor to help subdue the slave girls " stubborn pride", Bingham beat bleeding Keckley repeating over a month. In 1836, 18 year old Keckley was given to her owner's friend Alexander M. Kirkland, and he forced a sexual relationship on Elizabeth for four years, Elizabeth recalled it as "suffering and deep mortification".

In 1839, she bore Kirkland's son and named him George,after her stepfather. George Hobbs, a literate enslaved man worked and lived at a neighbor's house during Keckley's early childhood, but moved away when Hobbs slave owner moved far away. When she returned back to Virginia, in her early adulthood, she served a view family members on her father-sided. In addition, Keckley became an accomplished Seamstress and established connections with women in the black and white communities, which later labeled her as a

"Free Dressmaker".

Additionally, in November 1855, Keckley purchased her and her son's freedom in St.Louis,Missouri. She later enrolled her son, George Kirkland into Wilberforce University in Ohio, and then moved to Washington D.C. in 1860 after leaving Baltimore, Maryland where she stayed for six weeks. Eventually, Keckley established a dressmaking business, that included clients Mary Anna Custis Lee Robert E.Lee wife, the wife of Stephen A.Douglas; Adele Cults Douglas, daughter Margaret McLean of Maryland General Edwin Vose Sumner, and with the help of Mary Todd Lincoln on March 4,1861 the day of Abraham Lincoln first inauguration, Keckley had a interview the following day. As a result, Lincoln chose Keckley as her personal Modiste, and personal dresser.

Keckley made clothing in a simplified style of Victorian fashion, which was sophisticated,clean, and at it's best. She also founded the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862, after receiving donations from both the Lincoln's . The organization then changed its name in July 1864 to "The Ladies Freedmen and Soldier's Relief Association, to "reflect its expanded mission",after blacks started serving in the United States Colored Troops. The Organization provided food, shelter,clothing,and medical care to recently freed slaves known as "Contraband". In the end , after the civil war Keckley wrote and published an autobiography (Behind The Scenes : Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House (1868). In May 1907 , Keckley passed as a resident of the National Home,located on

Euclid st. NW,in Washington,D.C.

Zelda Wynn Valdes

African American fashion designer and costumer Zelda Valdes was born June 28,1905 in Chambersburg,PA and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She trained as a classical pianist at the Catholic Conservatory Of Music . In the early 1920's ,Valdes started work at her uncles tailoring shop in White Plains, New York and at a high-end boutique as a stock girl. Eventually, she gratuity serviced her way up to sales and alterations. Making her the first shops black sales clerk and tailor.

In 1935, she open her own dressmaking business in White Plains, New York , where she eventually developed Clientele. In 1948 Valdes open " Zelda Wynn", her first design dressmaking studio, on Broadway ( The first black business on Broadway). She sold dresses to Gladys Knight, Mae West, Josephine Baker, Jessye Norman, Joyce Bryant, Dorothy Dandridge, and more. The cost of Valdes couture gown started off at $1000. Granted that, Zelda skills was amazing; she also caught the eye of Playboy's Hugh Hefner, who commissioned Zelda to design the first costumes for the Playboy Playmate, which is how the original "Playboy bunny Costume", started. The costume was presented at the opening of the first Playboy club in Chicago,IL on February 29, 1960, and drawn attention for also the first commercial uniform to be registered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Zelda was one of the Founders of the National Association of Fashion Accessory Designers, directed the Fashion and Design Workshop of the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teams (HARYOU-ACT), and design costumes for Arthur Mitchell new company, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In the end, Valdes has design over eighty-two productions, up until her death in 2001 at the age of 97.

Altogether, these historical Black Fashions PowerHouse (BFPH) Icons have created a leading life of experiences for the upcoming designers.

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#ElizabethKeckley

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